DRRATA. 

On Iflth page, 3fl line, read so7is instead of songs. 

In 8th line, page 80, read An instead of And. 

In 3(1 line, page 79, read TJtem instead of They. 

In 19th line, page 101, leave out of. 

In 12th line, page 104, read my instead of by. 

Between the paragraphs on pages 146 and 147 there should 
be dashes. 

On page 157, between the 8th and 9th lines, there should be 
a separating dash. 

In 2d line, page 162, insert young before bard, and, in 5th 
line, its before crystal. 

In 18th line, page 164, read association's Gabriel instead of 
associations — Gabriel. 

In 6th line, page 182, read made instead of make. 

In 14th line, page 199, read we^re instead of were. 

In 6th line, page 211, leave out to. 



% 



THE EARLY 



POETICAL WORKS 



FRANKLIN EC^ DENTON 

OF Chardon, Ohio 
Author of " The Glass Dwarf" 



For what is poesy but to create 
From overfeeling good or ill, and aim 
^At an external life beyond our fate. — Byron, 

Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of ttie glories beyond the grave, 
we struggle by multiform combinations among the things and 
thoughts of time, to attain a portion of that lovelioess, whose very 
elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone^j^pQEk ( \\\ ^,'AU-^ 

"'A^ CO^^ «'i^H ^^ 



CLEVELAND, O 
WILLIAM W. WIL 




^fi^. 



OCT r ]883y 



4»r 



Copyright, 1883, by Franklin E. Denton. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction 

The Burning of the World 

Hymn to the Sun 

A Summer Midnight . 

Ode to Robins 

An August Afternoon 

A May Morning 

Pantheism 

The Deeds of Dying Patriots 

History 

Religions 

Sympathy 

If . . . 

What is the Patriot's Country 

All Real Things are Immortal 

Exultant Lament 

To the American Flag 

Bunker Hill 



PAGE 
7 
17 
20 
22 
24 
26 
29 
30 
31 

33 
35 
36 
37 

39 
40 

41 

43 
46 



-IV- 











PAGE 


Lines on the Civil War . . . .49 


Lines to America 








51 


An Introspection 








53 


Sunset 








55 


Music . 








5& 


Washington 








56 


Nature and Man 








57 


Friends 








64 


Lines . 








65 


Lines 








67 


Lines . 








68 


What is a Poet? 








69 


An October Morning . 








70 


The Bells of Claridon Town 








71 


Napoleon at Borodino 








73 


September 20, 1881 








76 


Hamilton 








78 


Lines . 








80 


In Memoriam . 








81 


Lines in Memory of F. B. S. . 








82 


The Outcast 








86 


A Little Girl . 








86 


To 








87 


To Poets 








87 


Woman's Love 








88 


Lines .... 








89 


The Tale of Two Seraphim . 








91 


The Maid of the Western Pal; 


ice 






135 





PAGE 


Extracts from Kallotron 


144 


The Bard and the Sage 


159 


Extracts from Autumn Day Musings 


167 


The Island . . . . . 


182 


Song ...... 


186 


•Lines ....... 


187 


Acrostic ..... 


188 


To M 


189 


Song ...... 


191 


Sonnets ..... 


192 


Why the Sunbeams Dance and Play . 


195 


Lines ...... 


197 


Life and Death .... 


199 


November ..... 


200 


May ...... 


201 


Why Does it Rain so Much in Fall ? . 


202 


Lines to a Robin Found Frozen 


203 


Lines .... , . 


204 


To Two Night-Blooming Cerei 


206 


Lines ...... 


207 


Words ...... 


208 


Fragment ..... 


209 


Fragment ..... 


210 


Lines ...... 


211 


Lines ...... 


212 


God Bless the Brave Old Pioneers 


213 


To 


217 


Christmas Night .... 


219 



-VI — 





PAGE 


To 


220 


When I am Dead .... 


221 


In Memoriam ..... 


222 


Fragment ..... 


223 


To 


224 


Lines ...... 


225 


Fragments of Wit and Humor 


226 



INTRODUCTION. 

The Ohio poet comes at a seemingly unpropitious time. 
This is not a day of poetry, nor a time for poets ; a day of 
intense mental activities, but not on the lines of the imagina- 
tion. There is boldness of speculation, but not of concep- 
tion; invention in mechanic arts, discovery of gold and silver 
mines, but not of poetic creation. It is a day of analysis, 
detail, finish, arguing a period of mental decline. Originality, 
strength, vigor are not sought; not missed even, bycriticism, 
in the literature of fancy and fiction. There is much pol- 
ished verse, much finely-wrought fancy, much delicate tracery 
and attenuated thought. Until this, our youngest, not an 
original poet of this latest time. 

It is a period of research, examination, re-e.xamination. 
Along the lines of physical science the advance is great, as 
in the mechanic arts. The spirit of the scientists has become 
pervasive, and their methods are in universal use. Men are 
enamored of matter, the laws of matter, of force and the 
laws of force. The soul of positivism is the soul of to-day. 
Men will have no more than can be certainly demonstrated. 



-VUl- 



The works of pure imagination, like all things spiritual, can- 
not by their methods be demonstrated any more than can 
they demonstrate God, and all are swept away together as 
baseless phantasm. The scientist's methods are employed in 
criticism, and, under this spirit of examination, are turned 
back upon old systems, old philosophies, old theologies, old 
traditions, which are shown to be mostly old dust heaps. 
Even the elder histories and biographies have had to be re- 
written. Old faiths have become a scoff, metaphysics a de- 
rision. To-day is a breaker of images. The fathers began 
by questioning; the sons cast things aside as unworthy of 
examination. Imagination and its works find no place. So 
much is found in matter that men see everything in it ; not 
God, but protoplasm; not poetry, but biology. 

In literature, the novel has no plot, no story, no moral, no 
come-out. Analysis— analysis and dissection of motive to 
commonplace action; productive of nothing. Endless minute 
lines of characterless character. The present generation of 
readers like it. 

It is the especial gift of genius to see. Indeed, this power 
is genius. The man who has it in an unusual measure is a 
genius. He sees the relations of things; is endowed with the 
wide logic of great relations. From the certainly seen and 
known he evolves the remotest unseen, unknown, and brings 
them to the vision of common men. Columbus evolved a 
new world, went and found it. It was the gift of his imag- 
ination to his time, to us. 

Genius endowed with the gift of song, the power and wish 
to sing, is a poet. Of the use and value of poetry it wo uld 



-IX- 



Tdc idle to discourse to men, who, rejecting its reality, scarcely 
deem it an ornament. The poet knows of the relations of 
things near or remote, as his gift is. He has the finer, subtler 
sense. He sees their beauty, color; detects their rhythm. 
His utterances of what he sees and hears are rhythmic. That 
is his mode of speech, his way of putting things; exquisite 
beyond all things to some few, even of to-day; babble and 
meaningless noise to the many. But he sings all the same; 
he cannot help it. He likes of all things to be heard; for 
sympathy is the soul — one soul of song. If not heard, still 
he sings, and like the solitary thrush finds compensation in 
his own notes. His song may not be much, nothing to the 
world. It is all things to him. 

We say of genius that it creates, when it only reveals, 
translates to our vision what it sees. For us it is creative. 
What it thus gives to us is of moment or is nothing, as it 
meets our conscious needs, our thirst, our hunger; and this 
is mainly determined by the tendency of our time, our indi- 
vidual make-up. We are not poetic. A great poem, the 
greatest, would not arrest our attention, A new Childe Har- 
old published to-day would not cause a ripple. The discov- 
ery of a new mine, a new motor, would excite the Republic. 

Poets are exceptional. They come, sing and go, accord- 
ing to the law of their kind, which no Newton, Darwin or 
Spencer has developed. The world often does not concern 
itself to understand the purpose they answer in the great 
human ecomony. A country often involved in financial ruin, 
by the over production of iron, may be excused for not cor- 



-X 



rectly estimating the production of a poet. He is outside its- 
political economies — all its economies. 

This latest poet comes as do all the songs of song, with no 
reference to the fitness of seasons, or the tendency ot 
times, and must probably create his own audience, which will 
at the first be slow to hear. The world has no standard by 
which can at once be determined the quality and rank of a 
new poet. If it hears and heeds him, it tries him in its own 
immutable way, in which time is a great factor. That he is 
a genuine poet will be manifest to an appreciative mind, that 
scans almost any dozen of his lines. What his rank or mag- 
nitude may be time must decide. 

Many mistake a love, appreciation of poetry for the power 
to produce it. Poets often do not greatly admire the song 
of other poets. Wordsworth never read any poetry but his 
own. Much of his is dry reading. A real poet is enamored 
of his own work. This is true of all genuine artists. It does 
not follow because a man loves his own work that it must be 
excellent. We have much polished verse, beautifully gilded, 
without a gleam of real poetry — the light of the essential 
beauty of things, which men see and feel, or they do not, as 
their gifts are, and which they can no more define or describe 
than they can essential melody. Many know beauty, poetry 
when they see it ; can talk of them. Has any man ever given 
a good definition of either ? The poet must catch and trans- 
late to us something of this essential beauty, rhythm, in some 
of its unnumbered foims, or he is not a poet. 

I am sure Mr. Denton has the faculty to do this in large 
measure. I might wish he had chosen other themes for its 



-XI- 



manifestations, than those in which this power is the most 
extensively exercised, but genius is its own law. You cannot 
point out to it a subject, or prescribe the conditions of its 
exertion; must take or reject what it offers. He has imagin- 
ation, conception. He also has a forcible, often a happy, a 
very beautiful power of expression. The two must be united 
— the poetic conception, the poetic expression. The last 
may be acquired; the first nevf^r, though it may be enlarged, 
perfected, like other powers, by exercise, and can for itself 
create or compel a power of expression. A vast deal de- 
pends on this last. Few men hit upon the best language, the 
best style. 

Mr. Denton's fault in this respect, as it seems to me, is a 
profusion of images, clothed in gorgeous language, and 
sometimes marred by the use of unusual words. " As many 
have, he will find that the fittest words for the poet, as for 
others, are the short words learned from his mother, and 
used by the playmates of his childhood. They are manage- 
able, expressive, and glide smoothly in song. 

His work is characterized by the vigor and daring of his 
imagination. In his more sustained efforts, he grasps his 
hero and flashes off through space to some gorgeous world 
of his own creation, and there develops, with great vigor, the 
controlling idea, in action and thought. Often creation and 
action are Miltonic, as is his diction, though in no respect is 
his work an imitation of any poet. The rhythm is usually 
good, sometimes sweet and perfect; the figures grand, the 
thought noble, the flight sustained and daring. He abounds 
in quotable lines, fine passages and very happy expressions. 



-Xll- 



Some specimens I take at random from the "Tale of Two 
Seraphim ": 

"With thy fingers 
Feeding the ^een-daggarcd grass to a pet lamb." 
"I am ^ pi?iio}ied 7nisery, Allana." 
"The great ere tombstones of their generations:" 
"Around me all is deathless peace and joy ; 
Within me all is deathless strife and pain." 
"I loved to roam 'round old deserted dwellings. 

At whose hingeless gates did Memory stand in tears." 
" The sweetest joy is to be grandly sad ; 

Pleasure is only Pain a hypocrite." 
"Oft cowards seem valiant allied with despair." 

" With the rising sun 
Of manhood, I first learned in bitterness, 
The world without is not the world within." 
" The very air was musical with fragrance." 
" There would be too much glory for their dust ; 
'Twould murder them with its divinity." 

Like all true poets, he takes his images first-hand, from 
nature direct. The few grand and beautiful objects are his 
whole stock; stars, the moon, clouds, mountains, snows 
rivers, winds, storms, flowers. He is not a dealer in second- 
hand wares, is not a milliner. He holds his theme securely, 
and wields his implements with strength and facility, often 
with grace. Many of his shorter pieces have great sweetness- 
especially those where he indulges himself in the luxury of 



-Xlll- 



simple language. They show delicacy of conception, and 
mastery of easy-flowing versification, full of promise and 
prophecy for later and riper years. 

Mr. Denton is a graceful and forcible writer of prose. 
Some of his prose tales and sketches, notably ' ' The Glass 
Dwarf," exhibit the tendency of his fancy to the unusual, — 
the grotesque, some will say, — which, when he has exhausted, 
he will find his proper field more within the reach of men's 
sympathies and affections. 

He is now a very young man (23); is assuredly to find a 
place m American letters, a conspicuous one, if he is enabled 
to control and wisely use his undoubted powers. 

A. G. R. 

Washington, September, 1883. 



THE EARLY POETICAL WORKS 

OF 

FRANKLIN E. DENTON. 



Early Poetical Works 

OF 

FRANKLIN E. DENTON. 



THE BURNING OF THE WORLD. 

There came no warning of the final day. 

The morning clomb the east as young as when 

Adam and Eve, pure as their Paradise, 

Did hail its advent with their orisons. 

Fleets were upon the oceans, armies fought, 

And countless marts sent up their smoke and din; 

Lovers did clasp, and there were funerals; 

Men laughed and wept, and their own shadows chased. 

And all was as it had been evermore. 

Hurried the hours, the sun plunged to his rest, 
Drenching the west in blood ! Outsprang the stars; 
But changed their aspect, for the grief divine, 



The god-like pity of their golden eyes, 

Was gone, and each became a fiery sneer ! 

The even was afraid; and there did come 

Such paralyzing terror in the air, 

Such a bewildering sense of dreadful ill. 

That the strong hearts of the most virtuous sank 

Within them , as beneath a mount of lead ! 

A red streak fringing the horizon black, 

A horrid roaring of the brazen east. 

Then, like a lightning-sandalled hell, the fire. 

The avenging fire, rushed round the recreant globe! 

Rich provinces were shriveled as if leaves ! 

The roasting nations robed the earth with shrieks ! 

The emerald Andes of the oceans writhed 

Above the clouds in their green agony. 

Flinging a snow-storm of tlie skeletons 

Of their innumerable monsters o'er 

The mighty pinnacles of mountains doomed ! 

But all was over soon. The radiant earth, 
A ghastly cinder, a stupendous coal, 
Wandered upon its ancient path a corpse ! 



—19— 

The bright orbs sparkled and the great sun shone, 
And all the universe was peace and joy ! 
For Discord is Time's illegitimate, 
But Concord daughter of Eternity. 



-20- 



HYxMN TO THE SUN. 

O Sun, hell wandering up the firmament ! 

God smiled ! thou vvert ! thou art a laugh of Him ! 

I, but an one of all the billion ghosts 

That wail and storm around this whirling world 

In the delirium of consciousness. 

How can I hope my wingless syllables 

Will ever reach the golden ear of thee? 

Thee who beheld the world travailed ! beheld 

It, ocean-robed, roaming a purple ball, 

Coruscant in the chrism of thy beams ! 

Beheld the earthquake-breathing continents 

Upheave their mountain spines from the sphered sea; 

To whom the lives of races are but heart-throbs ! 

Yet must I worship thee, or else my soul 

Will burst with its religion's sweet excess ! 

Drowned in the viewless surges of the gales 
Are all my orisons ! They caimot reach 
Thme azure inaccessibility ! 



2 1 

And this is why thou heedest not my tongue ; 

For, sure, thy flaming magnanimity 

Would spurn us not, though specks invisible. 

Weak as we are, and mighty as thou art, 

There are great thoughts that do enthuse our dust 

Which are commensurate with time and space. 

So old thy birth seems almost now ! to whom 

The building of the sky was yesterday ; 

On whom the cataract of ages falls 

With less effect than even's crystal dew 

Upon the huge steeps of a garnet mountain, 

And who will still be in their infancy 

When the exhausted stars fall from on high, 

And thou thyself, who blazeth yon vast clouds. 

Yon floating continents of colored snow, 

Into a conflagrating heaven, shall. 

Icy and black, be sunk in the debris 

Of a disintegrating universe ! 



22- 



A SUMMER MIDNIGHT. 

O it is sacrilege to sleep to-night ! 

The clouds are talking to the answering hills, 

And the black world is hstening with delight 

To the tremendous colloquy ! See, see, 

/The jagged lightning leaps athwart the dome, 

Like a glorious thought across a great sad brain, 

And all the rocks laugh in the bloody light, 

And every sabre of the glistening grass 

And leaf, is quivering with the conflict-joy ! 

The indefatigable scouting winds, 

Those Cossacks of the armies of the rain. 

Sob through the creaking branches of the trees, 

And up the grave-like gapings of ravines. 

Like dreams of what it never more shall be 

Through the crumbling fane of a deserted heart. 

Now comes the rain, first in impulsive gush. 

Like the romantic tears of lissome maids, 

When moonlight drizzles through the emerald muteness 

Of maples on an evening in June. 



—23— 

And now in vigorous incessant sheets, 
As if the anger of the skies, which first 
Did vent itself in thunder threatenings 
Upon the wickedness of the poor earth. 
At last did melt in charitable tears. 
O it is sacrilege to sleep to-night ! 



■24— 



ODE TO ROBINS. 

O robins, winged symphonies of spring, 
What master chiselled your exquisite notes? 
Are they a reflex of supernal song 
Wove in the blotless mirrors of your souls; 
Or rather in some skyward wandering 
Filched from the melody of Paradise? 

for an ocean of tears adequate 
To ease the irrepressible sweet Nile 

Of feeling that o'erflows its banks of heart ! 

1 seem to see your glittering crystal songs, 
For there is sight in sound and sound in sight, 
And all the senses are a UHit, when 

The soul is swallowed in the Beautiful. 

And now this eve, when the artillery 

Of thunderous and frowning skies has ceased, 

And its last echoes faded o'er the hills, 

And all along the illimitable west. 

The exulting sun shines the defeated clouds. 



— 2.S — 

Until they seem like glorious battle-flags 
Drenched in a thousand martyrs' saintly blood, 
And April, charioted by one lone cloud, 
And clasped and cinctured by a rainbow zone, 
Doth weep her copious impulsive tears 
Upon the twinkhng and the emerald grass, 
And underneath yon maple canopy 
Ye sweep your lutes, ye feathered troubadours. 
Do fling your tempests of incessant song 
Into the anxious air, it seems as if 
The fulgent tears that virgin April sheds 
Are melody corporeal, or that 
The flood-gates of the firmament are oped 
And earth is deluged with the notes of Heaven. 

O, that I were possessed of thy great gift, 
Thy precious gift, that I might sing, like thee, 
Of Nature and her wondrous loveliness. 
Of the deep meaning of the Beautiful, 
For e'en as withers your ethereal souls 
When prisoned in the cage of ruthless man, 
So fades the spirit of poetic thought 
Hampered by bars of rugged syllables. 



— 26— 



AN AUGUST AFTERNOON. 

If thou dost ever feel, in darkest mood, 

This world a lump of icy tyranny. 
Come to the coast of this cool, summer wood; 

Within this maple castle muse with me; 

Beneath the green piazza of this tree, 
Whose roof is intertangled gleam and leaf. 

All pied with purple strings; and if you be, 
My friend, my dear, dear friend, nor blind nor deaf, 
Here is a panacea for thy doubting grief. 

A hundred galleons of cumuli, 

Wandering silver Alps, are languid swimming 
The surgeless ocean of the crystal sky, 

And seem, in pallid gorgeousness of limning. 

Like mighty foam-flakes floating in the brimming 
Bowl of the firmament, from which the Sun, 

On his fire-throne, encircled by the hymning 
Of the glad virgin-spheres that he has won, 
Doth quaff his azure wassail till the day is done, 



—27— 

The gorgeous flags of the unripened corn, 

The swaying acres of the ghstening grain, 
Whose yellow fruit, not yet by sickle shorn, 

Doth seem as if a furlong of the plain 

Is purer gold than ever was man's bane ; 
The flocks, like wandering pearls with life endued; 

The faint-green pond of oats , where sunbeams deign 
To sail their boats of shadow dark and rude, 
Whose glittering wrecks are o'er each breeze-heaped billow 
strewed ; 

The yellow ribbon of the crooning stream ; 

The busy Londons of the weeds and grass, 
Where laboring and dinful nations teem 

With thronging populations that surpass 

The tribes of men; with histories that mass 
Traditions glorious, perhaps, and deeds 

As infinitely deep, suggestive as 
Those of our tomes. What are their laws, their creeds ? 
I know not, but like us, I know they feel great needs. 

There ever is a majesty to me 

In their sad, philosophic singing, and 
Astonished is my ear most frequently 

At that which they appear to understand. 



— 28 — 

Mountains and oceans not alone are grand. 
Sublimity exists in simplest things. 

A flower oft has the resource at command 
To lend a passive mind globe-circling wings, ["''SS. 

And embracing thoughts which shame the clasp of Saturn's 

All these are but a tittle and a gleam 

Of the extravagance of splendors which expand 
Before me, till I feel as if a dream. 

Beauty is the Creator's shadow, and 

It holds such sweetly absolute command 
O'er the visible this August afternoon. 

That e'en foul waters that in sluices stand. 
Which the lamenting clouds did weep last moon. 
Are pools of molten gold, bright as the orb aboon. 

Then come, dear friend, to this cool, summer wood, 

And view the noble world from my retreat; 
However pessimistic be thy mood, 

Nature has a nepenthe that will mete 

A cure, a cordial divinely sweet. 
O thou must learn from such a day as this, 

Too lovely is the world to be a cheat ! 
An avatar this gorgeous ball it is. 
And beauty is the bridge where mind and matter kiss ! 



-29— 



A MAY MORNING. 

A thousand dandelion suns are blazing 
From out the sky of the dew-glossy grass. 

The billows of the dazzling woods seem, raising 
The glistening emerald of each leafy mass, 
Horizon-girdling hills of solid glass ! 

Green thunder clouds ! O how deformed are we 
With all this splendor on us poured ! Alas, 

The gulf betwixt us and that which we see ! 

Earth is a gorgeous sponge soaked with Divinity 



-30— 



PANTHEISM. 

The soul that, in instinctive adoration, 

Is swallowed up, annihilated by 
The overwhelming beauty of creation; 

That doth in thrilling, tearful ecstasy, 

Pray to the molten garnet of the sky 
At Day's bright dissolution, or doth feel. 

When silently the worlds come out on high, 
And impulse irrepressible to kneel, 
A glory-tempest of devotion o'er it steal, — 

Heathen it may be, it is partly right ! 

Nature is never guilty of a lie. 
When, on a savage million's inner sight, 

She writes that yon orb flaming awfully, 

Like a hell-isle in the eternal sky, 
Is God, is't not a portion of his spirit? 

Has every burning prayer and raptured sigh. 
Hurled to yon orb by them who did revere it, 
Lost, lost ? Do souls breathe prayer to that which cannot 
hear it? 



—31 



THE DEEDS OF DYING PATRIOTS. 

The deeds of them who for their country die, 

They are of classes two. The first are done 
When keen blades flash, and bullets shrieking fly, 

And cannon smoke doth red the sickened sun. 

As down the west he hurries, as to shun 
The hideous anomaly of war ! 

When the black field, though carnage-piled, is won, 
And by the light of each astonished star. 
The fragments of the foe are scattered near and far. 

The second, and the grandest, they are done, 

When Time and Peace into the wounds their dowers 
Of balm have poured, and healed them everyone; 

After the fingers of the sunny Hours 

Unravel the dead veterans to flowers. 
And emerald-forted trees become their tombs, 

Whose garrisons' artillery are showers 
Of melody enwove in winged looms, 
Whose leafy battlements aie flagged with glistening blooms. 



—32— 

'Tis then the shadows of their spirits haunt 

And halo every forest, stream and vale 
Until divine ! Till their thused brethren pant 

With heroism that will never fail, 

Should all the armies of the earth assail ! 
So, dear America, thy boys who bled 

Still guard thee, though their sleep is cold and pale. 
Their spirit-legions, Lincoln at their head. 
Thus fight for thee to-night, will fight till thou art dead. 



-33- 



HISTORY. 

An argument divine is history 

To which the stars are listening intense. 
Man's destiny will its conclusion be. 

Civilizations are its links, and governments 

The age-long sentences of eloquence 
That doth evolve them. All the giant brains, 

That on this globe have pitched their clayey tents, 
Since the brave ark survived the aw^ful rains, 
That drowned the clouds and strangled the huge mountain- 
chains, 

Their luminous component syllables. 

Sunsets and earthquakes, myriad-tongued fire. 
That, still ungorged with palaced capitals, 

Doth lick the sky in its edacious ire, 

Whit'ning the moon's cheek with its onslaughts dire, 
The wails of outcasts wind-pierced, famine-eyed, 

The sweet delirium of love's desire, 
In the erotic hour of eventide. 
Through the lulled branches by the warm stars spied, 



—34— 

The battle-blackened, carnage-cumbered plains, 
Brothels and churches and each happy home. 

Thronged market-places, gallows, clanking chains, 
The thousand white-winged ostriches that roam 
O'er the blue desert of the ocean's dome, 

The funeral dragging thro" the cheerless street, 
The alien faces of the days that come. 

The ghosts of yesterdays we ne'er shall greet. 

Babes prattling and sad songs God-radiantly sweet, 

Are but a few of its apt metaphors. 

O lofty logic of terrestrial years, 
Soon shall we cease to be the auditors 

Of thy grand imagery of laughs and tears; 

Yet just enough our raptured essence hears, 
In this swift lightning in the black called /, 

Called living, that we feel, inspired as seers, 
Thy final link is fastened to the sky! 
Thy peroration in His capital on high! 



—35— 



RELIGIONS. 

Religions, they are spiritual spheres. 

Immortal truth their gravitation is. 
Whene'er the children of a thousand years, 

Plunged in the universe-abyss of His 

Awful, unfathomable mysteries, 
To the consoling breast of some faith-earth 

Do clmg, deem not the inconsistencies 
To which their sense and reason give a birth. 
Which often seem that globe's solidity and girth. 

That which doth hold them. 'Tis the gravity 
Of truth deep-hidden in the whirling ball 

Of the sick judgments, wills, you only see. 
That shackles millions in a loving thrall. 
And from whose bosom they can never fall 

Into nihility of hopeless space. 

While they continue sternly leal to all 

Their high conviction. Truth cannot embrace 

The heart that of dishonesty doth bear a trace. 



-36- 



SYMPATHY. 

The fundamental law is sympathy. 

Whatever we do sense, we do partake 
Of its deep being. Why, to even see 

Each other, such minute communions make 

Us like to one another. We forsake 
A little portion of that which we were, 

Trading unconsciously. It is a lake, 
Formed by the influx of the deathless stir 
Of sweet and bitter sympathies, thy character. 

And so the Author of Creation has 

Trailed his supernal garment o'er the earth, 

Gazed broadly into its round looking-glass, 
That we of such deformity of birth, 
Passion-fired ghosts that speck its rolling girth, 

Raving in the insanity of living. 

May be becalmed and balmed to nobler worth. 

By the glory that the universe is sieving. 

The sympathy celestial it is ever giving. 



—37— 



IF. 

If dissolution be but manumission, 

A sweet reprieve, as purest men do deem, 
Grander than any imagery elysian 

That on the canvass of my faith could gleam. 

This fancy unto me doth ever seem: 
Freed, freed from pessimism, passion, pain. 

Forgetting all the terror of this dream. 
To be a mind nude of its stunting brain, 
A naked thought that never more shall feel a chain. 

To be the peer of added time and space. 

To laugh at the illimitable years, 
Who never more shall blanch a pondering face. 

Shall drovi^n a single hope in gloomy tears, 

Shall bitter life's sweet into gall with fears; 
To have each breath the life of- the hugest sun; 

At one vast look to grasp the uncounted spheres; 
To sneer at the snailish pace of hght outrun. 
As swifter than mortal thought we visit each bright one. 



-38- 

O ancient fires, who spangle yon black dome ! 

Down throiigh your blooming concourse, swift as prayer 
Flashing from heart to heaven, would I roam ! 

So swift all ye who bound the path I dare, 

Divoiced each by ten million leagues of air, 
Would be but a continuous blazing lane, 

A silver cylinder divinely fair, 
A golden tunnel that could scarce contain 
The haughty thought that through it rushed without a rein ! 



—Z9- 



WHAT IS THE PATRIOT'S COUNTRY? 

All that men really admire, adore, 

Are idealities. O patriot, 
Dying upon yon battle-trembling shore. 

What is thy country for whom thou art shot. 

And for whose life thine own shall soon be not ? 
Is it the rocks, the valleys and the trees, 

The insensate hills, the babbling marts that blot 
Earth's laughing face ? Say, is thy country these ? 
No, no ! 'tis a congeries of grand ideas ! 

Thy noble soul paints on thy valiant eyes 

The undying past's heroic memory. 
Then, all that in their bright discerning Hes, — 

The river roaming to the roaring sea, 

Mountains storm-crowned, fresh forest, lushy lea. 
Vale-nestling town, — are blooming with thy dream. 

This is the reason they are dear to thee, 
And this why them thou dost thy country deem. 
'Tis for a shadow of thy soul thy blood doth stream ! 



—40- 



ALL REAL THINGS ARE IMMORTAL. 

All real things are immortal, yet alas, 

Our high perception doth become so dull. 
Environed by the sensuous and crass, 

The deep acumen of this beautiful, 

Internal eye the years do oft annul, 
And then the pageantries of sense we deem 

(Which are the sum of the intangible,) 
Realities. Matter doth only seem. 
The only substance is the soul's all-grasping dream ! 



-41 — 



EXULTANT LAMENT. 

Last night I heard some little children singing, 
And though I've staggered through the empty day, 

My being, like a silver bell, is ringing 
With unheard music of the sweeter lay 
Of memory's imitation. Joyless, gray, 

The sky, like the coffin-lid of the white earth, 
Glowers o'er me, but my soul is full of May ; 

I am ablaze with the divinest mirth ; 
And this grand mournful life is blooming in new birth ! 

Oh, I am great to-day ! So saturate 

With music that my eye is like the morn. 
Though earth be bleak, and mortals scheme and hate, 

I am too fetterless to be forlorn. 

Of my sweet boon the crowds around are shorn ; 
As moveless as a statue's are their eyes. 

Straight as the flight of honey-bees is borne 
Their narrow glance, but my mad gaze defies 
The cold horizon and the caging of the skies ! 



—42— 

I see the oceans lash their hundred coasts, 

The white noon Hke a silver libbon wind 
About the earth, the eyes of heaven's hosts 

Quiver with golden tears for poor mankind. 

Within the universe of my own mind, 
In one supreme sweet moment, the great past 

Is crowded with its battling kingdoms, blind 
In youthful folly, but adown the future vast, 
Peace, like a Sabbath noon, o'er the continents is cast ! 



-43— 



TO THE AMERICAN FLAG. 

In stern joy wrestling with the winds of morn, 

O banner of the millions who are free, 
Thy glorious image to my eye is borne ! 
Whoever gazed upon thy majesty, 
And was not willing then to die for thee ; 
Exclaimed not with fired pulse and streaming cheek : 
"Here, here am I, if thou desirest me! 
Though for the love the offering be weak, 
Here is this breath, whene'er thy safety it shall seek ! " 

The continent is strewn with heroes' graves! 

Few, very few, the hamlets of the dead. 
In all the land o'er which thy glory waves. 
In whose green cottages make not their bed 
Some of the myriad who for thee have bled! 
The Southland drank enough from their rich veins. 
To build a Cuban sunset, when the red 
Blazes and smokes through withered hurricanes! 
Their muscles laugh in flowers on all her hills and plains! 



—44— 

What this transparent world is to its God, 

So is thy color and thy shape to thee ! 
All, from young buds that dress the dewy sod 
To the gold road of awful suns I see 
In their interminable majesty 
Belting the azure midnight, are but His 

Apparel, although Him they seem to be. 
Haunting us with their lovely mysteries. 
What art thou, Flag? That which we see thy garment is ! 

Ocenturies of flame and blood and tears ! 

Old Herman breaking for the blue-eyed maids 
Of Germany Rome's world-subjecting spears, 

Deep in the Saxon forest's ancient glades ! 

Expiring Montfort, Hampden, and the shades 
Of all the thousands who, on Marston Moor 

And Naseby, their indomitable blades 
Laid down to clench for freedom nevermore ! 
The shivering Pilgrims on New England's wintry shore ! 

It is the crossing of the Delaware, 
Virginia's fields of snow with footprints red. 

And Washington the Great bent down in prayer ! 
All the Rebellion's patriotic dead. 
Each boy in blue in his flower-quilted bed I 



—45— 

Lincoln, and Garfield dying by the sea, 

And the immortal all they did and said ! 
Thou art the future's tKroes for liberty ! 
Thou art all this encrystalled in bright drapery ! 



-46- 



BUNKER HILL. 

The musketry that rolled on Bunker Hill 

Does still reverberate o'er land and sea. 
And never will its echoes cease until 

The humblest child of this great globe is free, 

And it forgets the name of tyranny ! 
O, mighty sun, thou then beheldst a fray, 

The like of which thou never yet didst see 
Since thoughts took form and clashed in war's array ! 
Though restless oft her sleep, the world first woke that day ! 

Few were the numbers that bright June engaged. 

In bloodiest wars it would a skirmish be. 
Why, they alone who died while Aspern raged. 

Or 'neath the terrible artillery 

Of Borodino, would outnumber three 
To one the Saxons on that holy mound ! 

Gauged the importance of events must be 
By thoughts which in their uniforms are found, 
The glorious ideas by them interwound. 



—47— 

The world awoke, and she will sleep no more ! 

A day then broke whose sun will never set 
Till the Archangel shakes this startled shore ! 

'Tis true that clouds obscure its brightness yet, 

And ere its noon must many a storm be met, 
But they, e'en by its glorious presence, are 

Soaked with sublimity ! What though they fret ? 
Behind the thunder laughs the deathless star. 
The golden floods of dawn can darkness dam or bar? 

Its fructifying beams wove from the soil 

Of Gaul's hard-trampled heart, the blooming tree 
Of freedom, and though passion's storm did spoil 

That crop for hungering humanity. 

The sleety winds of battle scattered the 
Vivific germs o'er waste of sand and snow; 

From the green, laughing vales of Italy, 
To where Sarmatia's sluggish rivers flow. 
Watered they were in blood, and all will ere long grow. 

Deep-sepulchred in Russia's icy sod 

For many a dark and stifling year, at last 

Their beauteous sprouts are pushing up tovvard God, 
Though the wide firmament is overcast. 
O, may that riftless cloud travail no blast 



-48- 

To nip the promise of each tender bud ! 
By all the pleading of the pallid Past, 
O, let no more their April rains be blood ! 
In Russia they must bloom, else it shall take a flood ! 



-49- 



LINES ON THE CIVIL WAR. 

Rebellion's memories remain alone ! 

Mute is the bugle's throat of silver, and 
The brilliant-winged banners all have flown ! 

The shocks of legions shake no more the land! 

Their glittering miles terrifically grand, 
Like gray and azure serpents interbraided. 

Whose feud a continent with fear has spanned. 
Like snow before a jet of steam have faded ! 
Only on plains of dream is their stern pomp paraded ! 

The very airs once stabbed with shrieks of dying, 

And burdened thick with souls their swift flight winging 

Beyond the sun, the battle redly eyeing, 
Now with the melody of birds are ringing 
And leaves' and waters' intertangled singing. 

Where the moist turf was torn by bursting shell, 

Grass and sweet flowers o'er the wounds are springing. 

The reeking steeds that rotted where they fell. 

Poisoning the winds with their insufferable smell, 
4 



— 50— 

The subtile loorm of beams and crystal rain 
Have woven into fragrance. The mad hoof 

That trampled on the bodies of the slain, 

Who knows but shimmers in the spangled woof 
Of rich blooms clinging blushingly aloof 

From some un wedded bosom that they dress? 
In the white clouds that deck yon purple roof, 

In infinitely-changing loveliness, 

The sun has spun the tears of Columbia's distress ! 

O North, O South, whose hate once made a hell 
Of this great land, for which, all side by side, 

Your mutual fathers battled to repel 
The tyrant Briton and together died. 
Let the exulting Future shout with pride 

That ye a lesson beautiful have drawn 

From Nature's teaching, and have ever vied 

To imitate her in the years agone ! 

O, let the storms of hate dissolve in love's wide dawn ! 



— 5Tf 



LINES TO AMERICA. 

Grand is thy mission, O America ! 

Thou art the Moses of the nations, and 
Thy mighty duty is to head the way 

To the rich regions of a promised land ! 

Thou art responsible for the command ! 
Remember this, O land of liberty ! 

And every kingdom of thy little band 
Is following with eyes fixed upon thee! 
A worthy captain thou must ever let them see ! 

Great are the crises through which thou hast past, 
And yet more perilous await thee still, 

And some thou art approaching very fast. 
Yet, somehow, I believe the darkest ill 
That shall befall thee on thy journey, will, 

Like thy sad internecine struggle, be 
The means of giving thee more strength; will fill 

Thy limbs with thews for the next enemy! 
Will burn a better temper in the steel of thee ! 



—52— 

In battle's balance hung thy destiny 

Four dreadful years ! Though dubitable was 
The issue to the eyes with which men see; 

Though Heaven's sad anxiety did cause 

The eager stars at Gettysburgh to pause 
And gaze,+ e'en while the vault the day did flood; 

He held,' to whom are mutable all laws, 
The mighty steelyards in His fingers good, 
And slavery, like a tropic sun, went down in blood ! 

If ever conqueror shall seize thy power. 

If ever tyranny shall rear her throne 
Upon the ruins of thy sunny bower, 

It may be built of human blood and bone, 

But its strong base will be of gold alone, 
Whose roots will clinch into the centuries. 

To Caesars Croesuses the stepping-stone. 
See what thy suicided lister is ! 
Gaze at Rome's crumbling corpse ! There's food for thought, 
I wis ! 

X It is said that the stars became visible at one time during the 
battle of Gettysburgh, the smoke being so dense as to obscure the 
sun. 



-53-- 



AN INTROSPECTION. 

The cold rain has extinguished the white moon, 

The sky is one incessant glare and roll ; 
But this mad night is dawn in sunny June 

To the fierce tempest raging in my soul ! 

The morning's roof will be from pole to pole 
Unfathomably azure, and the sun, 

Like music a sad heart, will flood the whole 
Heavens with splendor till the day is done ! 
Is there a dawn that will dispel my tempest ? None. 

As passionately do I love mankind, 

As bridegrooms their fair brides, when, midst the mirth 
Of their own wedding eves, doth Heaven bind 

The happy hemispheres ; but oh, my birth 

Has made an ahen of me at my hearth. 
An outcast 'mongst the friends who love me best ! 

Like worms the white days crawl around the earth. 
And I am tired and cold ! They never rest 
Who cannot trade themselves with some congenial breast. 



—54— 

I am not built as my kind fellows are, 
And under the same yoke 'tis hard to pull. 

My thoughts, my aspirations, are at war 
With other men's. I am not sensible, 
Because I am not purblind, hard and dull ; 

Because my blood is full of trumpets, when 
I see God shining through the Beautiful, 

In this grand world, the complex heaits of men, 

And the diviner pageants of my inner ken. 

But I have trod the path ot poesy 
Too long, too far, to pilot now my feet. 

Whate'er my stJ^r shall hold in store for me, 
It would be triumph infinitely sweet 
When fades the daylight of these seasons fleet, 

To feel that I had fired one smouldering heart 
With passion irrepressible to beat 

For all that is — the mission of true art. 

I should be ready then, if ever, to depart. 



-55- 



SUNSET. 

Like a vast bird, whose golden wings unfurled, 

Do stretch from pole to pole, from sea to sky, 
Forever flies yon sunset round the world, 

While generations and gray ages die. 

Yet if, upon a fire plume throned were I, 
And saw not the huge eastern gloom behind, 

I should behold the astral armies fly. 
And the white moon blown out by the glad wind 
Of the pinions of the sunrise God alone can bind. 

And'so the glorious rising of the sun. 

And the grand sinking of that sapphire ball. 
Appearing two, are really but one. 

It is the immobility, the thrall, 

Of our position only — that is all ! 
Sunset and sunrise one, so death and birth. 

Their orbs but over a horizon fall 
Who leave us desolate by their cold dearth. 
Tho' night to us, still day to them who leave the earth. 



-56- 



MUSIC. 

All the philosophy of this deep world 

Is locked in music's voice, but the bright key 

In mystery's abyss it has been hurled. 
One little song is the epitome 
Of the great heart of poor humanity. 

There all its fear, its hope, its joy, its pain, 
Is crystallized, and when we listen we 

Feel great and kind, because our hearts contain 
Mankind, whene'er our ears do quafta sweet refrain. 



WASHINGTON. 
" Macedonia's madman, " Cccsar, Bonaparte 

And Hannibal, ye bloody brood of Mars, 
Who made a plaything of the human heart, 

With all the glory of your hundred wars, 

What are ye as to him ? Red meteors. 
Blazing across the sky of history. 

Dazing earth's eye a moment with your farce. 
Then sinking in night's black abyss, but he 
The white immortal star in the cerulean sea. 



-57- 



NATURE AND MAN. 
I. 
Nature is praising 
Humanity ever ! 
The valleys, the mountains, 
The sky and the ocean. 
Forever and ever 
Are striving to waken 
In its great spirit 
A vanity holy ! 

The essence of all things 
Is human, is human ! 
The oriole sings not, 
Nor golden-sphered raindrops 
On ladders of sunbeams 
Chmb up to the heavens 
And weave into shapings 
Of vaporous angels, 
Nor sway the green cornfields 
With music of motion. 
Nor garrulous brooklets 
Purl down their pebbly 



—58- 

And devious channels, 
But that the motives, 
The springs of their action, 
Are hum\n, are human ! 

Like beautiful maidens, 
Aware of their beauty. 
The stars and the rivers. 
The storms and the sunsets, 
Strive thro' the ages 
To kindle the ardor 
Of love in the bosoms 
Of man they adore with 
Immortal affection ! 
Nature, what is she? 
Analogy of our 
Emotion, reflection, 
The bride of our spirits. 
Our hemisphere other ! 

O men , ye who struggle 
From dawn unto even, 
Who face the cold north-wind. 
No hope for the future 
But eating and sleeping, 



—59— 

And plodding and creeping, 

Till to your gate-ways 

Drive up the hearses, 

Be not dejected, 

For ye are greater 

Than all that surrounds you ! 

Be true to your yearnings, 

Cling to your dreams as 

Mariners shipwrecked 

To fragments of vessels 

Tossed o'er gray mountains 

Of midwinter surges ! 

Gling to your dreams for 

They are substantial, 

All else is transient ! 

Moss will grow o'er the 

Blue arches of heaven 

Senescently crumbling, 

While they are maidens, 

With youth in their warm limbs. 

And on their cheeks blushes ! 

Fly to a fortress 
Of high egoism ! 



— 6o— 

Look on yon heavens, 

The flower-spangled meadows, 

The beautiful forests 

Upon whose green shoulders 

The planet-thatched roof of 

Your glorious home rests ! 

Palaces are for 

Princes, and hovels 

For vassals and beggars ! 

Then what are ye, men? 

Look up and be haughty, 

Audacious, audacious ! 

n. 

Unbridgable chasms 
Divorce us forever ! 
We see one another, 
We feel one another, 
We know not each other ! 

Though Sorrow and Time have 
Her faithfully aided. 
Affection has never 
Braided two beings 
So closely, so onely, 



— 6i— 

But they were farther, 

O farther apart than 

The blue walls of space are, 

Not merely the outcasts 

Of thought, the deep spirits 

Long intervals coming 

Like comets, and seeming 

Outlaws celestial, 

Since we can grasp but 

A piece of their orbits, 

But they who are patient 

To hold their eyes earthward. 

Whose brains only compass 

Their homes and their labors, 

Live aching with secrets 

And die undivulging, 

And die understood not, 

That is by each other. 

But Nature, she knows us. 

Appreciates ever ! 

The moonbeams, the blossoms. 

The tremulous pennons 

Of gajr leaves and lainbows, 

The snow and the mosses. 



—62 — 

The east overbrimming 
With morn, hke an ocean 
Of tempest-tossed sapphire, 
So intense is their feeling 
For all that is human 
They seem in their splendor 
Our visible yearnings ! 
And never the sweet grass 
Sways in the warm wind, 
When morning is bursting 
The chrysalis of the 
Star-jewelled darkness, 
But that its motion 
Doth marry our thinking, 
Doth hymn all our prisoned 
And tongueless aspirings ! 
And never from mossy 
And gray rocks, pavillioned 
By sentinel trees that 
Thro' winters an hundred 
Have valiantly stood there, 
Doth glisten and trickle 
The rivulet new-born, 
But that deep down in 



-6s- 

Its fathomless pathos 
Of crystalline singing, 
We hear of the great days 
When man is unfolden ! 



-64- 



FRIENDS. 

And after all, what is there but our friends 

That makes life worth the living. Beggar he, 

Though the possessor of ten palaces, 

Who never grasped some fellow by the hand, 

And looked down through his eyes into his heart, 

And saw it beating for him. Emperor he, 

Though grovelling in obscurity his prime, 

Though the sister town of his nativity 

Has never heard the trumpet of his Uctme, 

Who loves some one and is by some one loved. 

As kingly fugitives by fate deprived 

Of throne and bancjuets epicurean. 

In starving madness might the morsels clutch, 

That dogs would loathe, so outcasts of great souls 

Hunt glory in life's ditch, but to appease 

The famine connate with tlieir wande<ng. 

Bright firesides and warm palms and welding hearts. 

They are the fragrance of the rose of life; 

The meat of the sweet nut; the rest is shuck. 

The saddest fate of being born is this: 

Birth makes its victim awfully alone. 

Is this the fountain of our afronv? 



-65- 



LINES. 
Nature herself is glorified 
Where lofty men have lived and died ! 
An holier azure paints the skies 

When Homers sing beneath them, 
And rugged mountains, that uprise 

So high storm-garlands wreathe them, 
Are ruggeder and grander when 

Amid their stern defiles, 
Leonidases and their men 

Have gone to death with smiles; 
Have poured out their heroic blood 

To the last drop in crimson streams; 
Have fallen for the Beautiful, the Good, 

Have fallen for their own supernal dreams 
Dreams— for a country only is 
A veil of idealities 

Flung o'er the forests and the fountains. 
Flung o'er the meadows and the mountains ! 
So no country he has got 
Who is not a patriot, 
5 



—66— 

And the strongest fortified 
Is the nation for whose story 

The most heroes they have died 
In the smoke of battles gory. 



-67- 



LTNES. 

Less merciless the furies were 
That followed Agamemnon's son, 

Than the transcendent face of her 
Whom I must shun. 

But why do I complain? It is 
No more than just the rest of life 

Should be unceasing miseries, 
Unceasing strife. 

Did I not kiss thee once? Did I 
Not feel the rapture of thy lips? 

The woe of an eternity 
That would eclipse. 

Whatever ills my lot may fall 
I can afford to bravely bear, 

That kiss would more than balance all, 
With heavens to spare. 



68- 



LINES. 

If in some high benignant sphere, 

Beyond corruption's turbid tide, 
The valorous hearts that battle here 

May one day peacefully abide, 
How beautiful it were to think. 

In that forever-shining land, 
They may be loosed from every link 

That bound them to this suffering strand. 

Emancipated serfs of change 

And gloom, and clay and passion's curse, 
Their essences divine may range 

The immeasurable universe ! 
Unfettered by all low desire, 

Eagle-like, the imprisoned soul 
May mount forever higher and higher, 

Eternity, while ihou shalt roll ! 

How beautiful it were to think, 
That nothing there may be unlearned; 

From wisdom's fountain they may drink 
Tne draught for which they only yearned ! 



-69- 

No more the stifled thought may grope 
In labyrinths of doubts, forlorn, 

But lily-like its powers may ope 

To quaff the greatness of the morn. 



WHAT IS A POET ? 

What is a poet ? Not he who at times 

Constructs with faultless accuracy rhymes, 

Whose excellencies do alone abound 

In the recurrence of a final sound. 

For, as the body is without the mind. 

So, too, that verse where only rhyme we find. 

Anointed with genius, Nature's chrism. 

The eye of a true poet is a prism , 

Which doth unhraid life's achromatic beams 

All into spectra of divinest gleams ; 

And, like the Koran's angel Israfel, 

His heart-strings are a lute. They softly swell 

In sweetest strains to feeling's fickle breeze. 

Like the crescendoes of the midnight trees, 

And ever Beauty sweeps the saintly strings 

With fingers of divine imaginings. 



— 70— 

AN OCTOBER MORNING. 
It is a bright autumnal morn, 
A grander one was never born. 
The wheeling killdeer skims the lake, 
Singing all the trees awake ! 
Growing happier and fatter, 
Hear ye not the squirrels chatter, 
As the ripened nuts down-patter? 
Far sounds are near, the partridge drums, 
O'er withering flowers the wild bee hums. 
Cool purple Dawn by Boreas kissed 
Looks down with eye of amethyst. 
And ail the hills are strange with mist. 
Like Midas, in the myth of old. 
The frosts are touching things to gold. 
The crimson woods are all afire; 
Kindled is Summer's funeral pyre, 
Invigoration fills the air. 
That exiles from the brow of care 
The wrinkles that had furrowed there, 
And to the weariest soul doth breathe, 
And to the poorest soul bequeathe. 
With its own spirit, sweet and free, 
A deep desire to do, to be ! 



71— 



THE BELLS OF CLARIDON TOWN. 

It was a gentle Sabbath day, 

And feathery fell the large flakes down, 
When, o'er the hills, five miles away, 

I heard the bells of Claridon town. 

The mind has its vacations, when 

It is unconscious of its gyves ; 
In those sweet interregnums, men 

Live longer than their lives. 

As pansies drink pellucid rain, 

As clouds imbibe the summer moons, 

As hearts quaff love that has no wane, 
When kisses are the swift pontoons ; 

So quaffed my soul those solemn sounds ; 

I saw where I could never see ; 
My intellect it knew no bounds ; 

Then did I Hve a century. 

Mine was the boon, the precious boon. 

To mentally be free, be free ! 
I followed westward the wide noon. 

And heard them ring from sea to sea. 



— 72 — 

O'er continents of bloom and snow 
I passed, where'er devotion dwells ; 

And then 1 knew, as angels know. 
That earth is zoned with holy bells. 



-73- 



NAPOLEON AT BORODINO. 

Borodino's battle was over ; 

The moon, aghast and red, 
Stared down on leagues of wounded, 

Stared down on miles of dead. 

The sleet of a Russian autumn 

Swept o'er a sanguine plain. 
Where the whetted scythe was ambition, 

And the grass was heart and brain ; 

It was then that incarnate Woden, 

The mighty Napoleon, 
Rode with his ofificers over 

The ground the Gaul had won. 

When this captain with hand cephalic, 
This chieftain with manual head. 

Drove over a soldier's body. 
Whose spirit not yet had sped ; 

And the woeful wail that he uttered 
As his vital sands were run, 



—74— 

Like a cloud's electric dagger, 
Stabbed Fortune's adopted son. 

And this mortal with body of iron, 

This mortal with brain of ice, 
Whose sumptuous stage of action 

A sphere would scarce suffice, 

Mute till this moment as Memnon, 

Travailed a pitiful groan, 
As if the griefs of a lifetime 

Were crystalled into tone. 

Genius the same is in essence ; 

Like water, its forms are its fates ; 
In warriors it crashes thro' gorges, 

In poets thro' pastures it prates. 

There midst the storm and the corpses, 

This grandest of earthly kings 
Saw, o'er terrestrial tumults, 

The true, the immortal things. 

And he thought not of banners and cannons, 
He thought not of legions and ships ; 



—75— 

He thought of the wives and husbands, 
And the graves betwixt their Hps. 

He cared not for scroll of Clio, 

He cared not for conquered crowns ; 

But he cared for the little orphans 
In a thousand rural towns. 

So once in the storm of living. 

This epitome of Gaul 
Shone forth in his natal glory, 

His heart was as wide as all. 



-76- 



SEPTEMBER 20, 1881. 

Belted with wailing bells, unreconciled, 
The World is weeping like a little child; 
Yet, as to lamp an universal feast. 
The laughing sun is bounding from the east; 
A mocking joy doth thrill the vigorous air. 
And over all that is so fresh and fair, 
Does the ineffable autumnal sky 
Arch its immaculate eternity. 

O Morn, thy red, gigantic banners trail, 

And ask the West for thy cold, midnight veil ! 

Hast thou not heard of the sardonic fate, 

That leaves Columbia so desolate? 

Heard not December snow has covered o'er 

The ungarnered wealth that Autumn had in store? 

That the grand vessel that has stood the shocks 

Of many a tempest, when the heaven-hurled billows 

Did make of the colossal clouds their pillows, 

And ridden safely o'er a thousand rocks. 

At last, at last, in the unruffled blue 

Of a surgeless port is wrecked— yes, sunkeH, too ? 



—77— 

Heard not the bright sun at its zenith height 
Has suddenly been blotted out of sight ? 
Garfield is gone ! America, grief-dumb, 
Weeps in the illimitable vacuum ! 
If thou'st no pity for her bleeding heart. 
Shatter it not with sacrilege — depart ! 

' Poor, purblind World," sweet hymned the Morn, 
' So pure a soul so late has trod 
Elysium's radiant portals, 
So grand a soul has gone to greet its God, 

And mingle in the throng of the immortals, 
The Universe's heart, though pitying all the while, 
Must burst with its unutterable joy, or smile ! 

Nature doth laugh that he is born ! 
Weep for thyself, if thou hast tears to shed ! 
It is the living who are dead ! " 



-78- 



HAMILTON. 

As Franklin drew the lightnings down 
From their ethereal home, 

And made them vassals to the crown 
Of all the years to come, 

Yoking them to Progression's car, 

Making more swift its journey far ; 

So, in his hand, with power endowed, 

Columbia's sainted sire 
Caught from the Revolution's cloud 

The thaumaturgic fire 
Of the genius of a Hamilton ; 
And, till the victory was won, 

He leavened with it his own mind, 
The clear, calm focus, where 

Each meteoric flash did find 
A base from which to bear, 

With best availability, 

Upon the might from o'er the sea. 



—79— 

Ye, who the records love to read 

Of this Republic's great, 
They whom, on thrones of thought or deed, 

The centuries celebrate. 
Pronounce, pronounce a greater one 
Than Alexander Hamilton ! 



■So- 



li NES. 

When Mirabeau lay dying, ere 

His flaming and dynamic heart 
Forever fled the warring sphere 

Where it had played so great a part, 
He from his couch of death beheld 

The sun upsoar into the morn, 
As fresh as in the years of eld, 

As young as when the world was born ! 
Though agony his frame did rack, 

When on that glorious orb he gazed, 
The old-time Mirabeau came back. 

And from his lips this language blazed, 
Divinely blasphemous, sublimely odd : 
'Tis His own cousin, if it be not God !" 

O nation of innumerable kings, 

Beneath- the shelter of whose mighty wings 

The hope of all the future is ; 
Where honest r.igs, if only loyal. 
Are purple robes supremely royal ; 
Where each one owns that which he may be 
And a crown prince s every baby. 



If thou art not the sweet millenium, 
That the Apocalypse has said must come, 
Most certainly, thy cousin 'tis! 



IN MEMORIAM. 

The agony of ninety years of breath 

Had stained the firmament of her dear face, 

But, as the sable swan of death did fold ' 

Existence in its opiate wings, and kiss ♦ 

The curtains of the azure windows down. 

These mournful mists of life's spent storm dispersed, 

And radiance of peace almost sublime. 

As if the subtle sympathy betwixt 

Beings in a communion long had made 

The features feel the joy of the flown soul, 

Enthused the pure, immaculate expanse. 

As when, upon a rainy day in June, 

Just as Eve shades the world with starry wing, 

The cohorts of cloud-giants break and flee, 

And the unwinging moon doth saturate 

The blue arena with its wizard gold. 



—82- 



LINES IN MEMORY OF F. B. S. 
I. 
The lightning never stabs the earth 

When peace and blue are overhead, 
And yet they told me in my mirth 
That thou wert dead . 

A year had passed almost since last 
Thy cordial hand in mine I took, 

An^, with "good-bye," upon thee cast 
The final look. 

O had I known that thou so soon 

Would die, that we no more should meet, 

How precious had 1 prized thy boon 
Of friendship sweet. 

But who with breast so deep and wide. 
Such health of cheek, such wealth of arm? 

A nobler fort ne'er fortified 
A heart so warm. 

And tiien so brave, so true, so calm, 
Thou wert so like this gentle day, 



-83- 

I thought thy life like some sweet psalm 
Would melt away. 

But night came down in the forenoon, 
And hung in black the yellow hours. 

The snow-drifts piled o'er bonny June 
And all her flowers. 

II. 

The red woods moaned, and cold and wet 
Was gathering night with autumn rain. 

When, at the graveyard gate, I met 
Thy funeral train. 

I saw the hearse that held thee halt, 
And friends, who lingered in the storm, 

Grouped, in the entrance of the vault, 
Around thy form. 

With brow uncovered, in the rain, 
I watched them, but I stood apart ; 

To gaze on that deserted fane 
I had not heart. 

When last I saw the mansion fair. 
Its hospitable door was ope ; 



-84- 

A generous host resided there, 
And all was hope. 

But now the lights they were blown out, 
The windows dark, the curtains drawn. 

And all within, around, about, 
Once dear, was gone. 

O no, I would not, could not see 

That cold and lonely edifice. 
Existence has no misery 

Like bygone bliss. 

III. 

Who can be gifted more than he, 
Or be with nobler powers endued ? 

He was inspired and born to be 
Loving and good. 

Goodness his genius was, and none 
Their years to higher deeds are giving. 

For thoroughly by him was done 
The task of living. 

His life no broken column was ; 
Though it was fleet, it was so meet. 



-85- 

Where'er the growing shaft might pause, 
It was complete. 

I never more shall shake his hand, 

Nor look into his loyal eyes ; 
Yet, if he liveth in a land 

Through yonder skies, 

I care not whither he has gone, 

Though 'twixt the strands of our far lands, 
Half the blue universe doth yawn, 

Our souls clasp hands ; 

And 'twould be easier to rob 

A white star from the eve above, 

Than from remembrance one warm throb 
Of my deep love. 



-86- 



THE OUTCAST. 

A weary outcast fell asleep 

One midnight on the wintry earth, 
Her slumbers were so sweetly deep 

She heeded not the morrow's birth. 

The selfish crowds went jostling by, 
And coldly sneered at her who slept, 

But God felt sorry in the sky, 
And all His shining angels wept. 



A LITTLE GIRL. 

Her hair was a cluster of beams of the moon. 

And her eyes were like pieces of sky in mid-June, 

And her smiles were as bright as the laughter-winged hours 

When morn kisses the tears from the cheeks of the flowers. 

Her step was as light as the feet of a breeze. 
That dance upon perfumes of clover-clad leas, 
And her voice was as sweet as the raptures that start 
When Fancy and Love play the lute of the heart. 



n— 



TO 

Whene'er the rising sun's red rays 
Upon the Sphinx of Memnon fell, 

From out that sad and ancient face 
A music sweet would well. 

I am the stony Sphinx ; the sun 
Is thy immutable warm heart, 

Shining on me till life is done ; 
The music — my poetic art. 



TO POETS. 
Poets, what if ye sing ? 
What counts your hundred songs? 
When ye are mouldering, 
Earth will be full of wrongs ; 
Despite of all ye've sung 
Men will be shot and hung ; 
Beggars will wander to and fro. 
In the night and in the snow. 
With nowTiere to go ; 
And the poor will starve and freeze 
In sight of palaces. 



-88— 



WOMAN'S LOVE. 

The dome of heaven is not half so deep 

As a true woman's love; 
The silver sentinels may fall asleep 

Upon their beats above, 
Her heart is wakeful still. It is its rest 
To be a guard o'er him who seems the best. 

Go, pluck a spray from yonder flowering bush, 

And, meeting the red day, 
The inextinguishable morning push 

Back into streaks of gray, 
With thine own feeble breath blow out the sun; 
Thou'lt fail to lose her love, if once 'tis won. 

It is the shield, the trumpet, and the spear, 

In the campaign of life; 
The warrior without it well tnay fear, 

Unarmed he seeks the strife; 
Yes, it is deeper than the blue above. 
For 'tis an exiled gleam of Heaven's love. 



-89- 



LINES. 

O, how narrow is our vision 
That we see not more elysian 

In the commonest of things; 
Why, a lumber wagon's rattle 
Is as grand as any battle, 

If our ears had only wings. 

'Tis a necessary fraction 

Of the world's unfolding action, 

Detail of the life of man; 
Discord when we hear it single, 
Music when we make it mingle 

In the complicated plan. 

In the simplest shines the story 
Of the universe's glory, 

And the lofty and the wise 
See that all things are relations. 
Follow the concatenations 

Till above the stars they rise. 



— 90— 

Even anguish, even error, 

Taints them with no trace of terror, 

For the All is in their eyes; 
Knowing nothing isolated, 
From the loved and from the hated, 

Up to God they generalize. 



—91— 



THE TALE OF TWO SERAPHIM. 

PART I. 

Leave me not yet, snow-bosomed Madeline, 
For oh, the night is vast and dim and cold ; 
For Silence hangs a terror on the clouds. 
And all the air is thick with subtile fear ; 
O fly not yet, ill is my soul these hours. 
And pageantries of image-thought they pass 
Before its luminous-pale mirror like 
The fugitive blast-shattered ghosts of mist 
That flit before the white cheeks of the moon; 
Leave me not yet, snow-bosomed Madeline. 

Leave me not yet, snow-bosomed Madeline; 
The maniacal shudder of the winds 
Is even sweet to me whilst thou art near; 
Then does it seem as if their moaning was 
Of their^invisible and agile fingers 
Unraveling the colors of the leaves 
To music delicate, or else it were 
The harmony of the unanimous 



—92 — 

Exhaling of the souls of myriad flowers, 

Expiring over all the autumn-land; 

Leave me not yet, snow-bosomed Madeline. 

Leave me not yet, snow-bosomed Madeline; 

Thou art the bright sun of my mental world, 

Thou art the source of all its light and life, 

And every violet of my singing thought. 

That clambers heavenward through the black dust, 

Is woven into beauty by thy love; 

Next to the love of God is woman's love; 

Thou art the fair and only oasis 

O'er the Sahara of my shattered dreams; 

Thy lips exhaustless, life-bestowing springs, 

Thy soft, long tresses rest-inviting palms; 

Leave me not yet, snow-bosomed Madeline. 

Leave me not yet, snow-bosomed Madeline; 
Thou art the firmament and I the sea; 
Aim surgeward the love-shining of thy eyes. 
That I may mirror them, and be inspired 
To sing to thee a song of wondrous love, 
Of love so fierce, so pure, that e'en a hell. 
With all its deathlessness of icy death, 
Could not extinguish it ! O hearken, hearken ! 



—93— 

Long, long ago, before this globe was forged. 

Before the desert island df sad time 

Rose in the fair sea oi eternity, 

That hour the radiant eyes of weeping stars 

Are tremulous with tears of silver-fire. 

As slowly down into its black west grave, 

The gorgeous catafalque of the dead Day, 

With all its funeral train of splendid clouds 

Is wandering, two mighty seraphim 

Stood in the thickening of the sweet dusk, 

Beside a river in Elysium. 

Hadst thou perused the visage of the one. 
The lyric of his lofty lineaments. 
It would have seemed to thy surrendered eye 
Like one of those sad, giant clouds that mope 
, Before the east moon's yellow majesty. 
Upon an August midnight's sultriness, 
When all the elements do seem afraid. 
And not a sound infracts the hot, damp silence, 
Save the oppressed and storm-prophetic gusts 
Of sluggish winds and insect-orchestras. 
A restless gloom was in his trenchant eye. 
And from the marble scowl of that wide brow 



—94— 

To the thin bitterness of icy lip, 

Her hieroglyphics unmistakable 

Had Passion graved. I know not why, nor how, 

Nor matters it, but e'en in Paradise 

She dwelt, and of her brood, the terriblest, 

Ambition, as the canker the sweet rose, 

Inhabited his being. Moveless, mute, 

Like a colossal statue, with eye fixed 

Upon the broad, cerulean-rolling river, 

Intensely gazed he, sadly listening. 

With what attention there did yet remain 

Outside the strong portcullis of himself. 

A physiognomy of pallid iron. 

The other, oh, the other! hadst thou seen 

Her standing on that bloom-mosaiced strand, 

Environed by the grandeur of night-heaven. 

Thou wouldst have wept such tears as only when 

Some strange, swift mood doth recreate the Past, 

Enkindling with such radiance her cheek, 

That e'en the features once deemed dull and common, 

Are raimented with such excessive beauty, 

We weep above her grave in utter gloom ; 

Or when imagination hears the song 



—95— 

Of the Events, for what is history 

But the grand music of the staggering feet 

Of the strugghng horcjes of poor humanity, 

Scaling the heights of destiny toward God? 

Her face was mournful as the sinking moon, > 

In the afternoon of some autumnal night, 

Gazing through cold, white mist athwart the world, 

And as she spake, her shining syllables 

Did heave and quiver on her heart's deep feeling, 

Like water-lily leaves upon a lake, 

O'er whose blue meadows summer winds go stealing. 

This, dearest, was the burden of her speech : 

"O Alaron, thou, whom to be without, 

Doth make a hell of heaven ; whom I have loved 

Not only since the death-gate opened wide. 

And we were made the winged inhabitants 

Of this illimitable world of joy. 

But ages long ago, when we, in dust 

Incarcerated, groaned and wept and stormed 

In the sad frenzy of an earthly life ! 

Yea, then, myall, I loved thee, yet alas. 

How futile and how fruitless was that love ! 

Begirt by the insuperable crags 



-96- 

Of circumstances, thy ambition, rank, 

My fortune humble, long, dividing leagues, 

I never was imprisoned by thy arms, 

I never felt thy kisses on my lips, 

I never heard thy throat of eloquence 

Reciprocate my fierce idolatry ! 

No, with love's famine ragmg in my veins, 

On to the grave full fifty years I crept. 

Thou hadst preceded me unto the gate. 

In nation-palsying, flame-girdled battle, 

A sphere invisible of whistling death 

Did breach the walls of thy soul's capital. 

And it did make a sortie through the sky. 

Up to this glorious coast, and here, at last, 

The tempest-shattered pinnace of my soul 

Did sail into the haven of thine own. 

But oh, thy greeting! cruel, icy greeting! 

How didst thou greet me? O alas, alas ! 

How hast thou cherished me since that far time? 

A hundred centuries have died since then, 

A hundred centuries, and all their lives, 

Which should have been a joy ineffable, 

Have been an agony crescendoing ! 

Thou savs't thou lovest me, but oh, that love 



—97— 

Has been inconstant as a gale of March, 

In years we wandered in our primal world; 

Like certain April waning afternoons — 

The sun would blaze from out a blotless dome, 

The robins make the fresh trees seem green music. 

The air was like a loving maiden's breath, 

And lo, in little while, e'en scarce an hour, 

Great caravans of chill and ghastly fog 

Did stifle all the world in pallidness. 

Save oozy frogs, ice-liberated, who, 

Down in the gloomy, miasmatic bogs, 

Beside the black floor of the still lagoon, 

Were crymg sadly to the wading moon ! 

"Alas, alas, the hopes that cheered the path 
That led me here, are all dispelled, destroyed. 
Methought in Heaven pain could never come, 
But all the pains of earth were sweetest pleasure. 
Placed side by side with those I suffer here ! 
It was enacted by our gracious King, 
From the beginning of ensouled things, 
Some certain woman, certain man, should form 
An integer, whose fractions in that whole 
Find perfect bhss, and though they traverse earth. 
7 



-98-- 

Mismated by their sickly wills or judgments, 

By the vicissitudes of life and death, 

At last the suffering elements do here 

Greet, clasp in their affinity undying ! 

Alas, that law does not apply to us ! 

Exceptional are we ! O Alaron, 

What is the cause of this? What have I done 

To merit this ? Why lovest thou not me 

As once thou didst ? O is there not one spark 

Remaining, I may yet caress to flame? 

O, Alaron, do love me as I thee. 

That joy may once more steal upon my years ! 

Why canst thou not, dear one, why canst thou not?" 

Here ceased she; as she ceased, she threw 

Her soft, white wings about his proud-poised neck, 

And on his bosom flung her flushing cheek, 

Like poppies blooming in the Christmas drifts, 

Like a sunset spilled upon two mounts of snow. 

The azure agony of her deep eyes 

Did sing in spheres of watery eloquence. 

Which dripped from the fringed eaves of their white 

roofs 
So crystally, that had she but then smiled, 
A glistening bow had arched each optic sky. 



—99— 

A moment gazed he on that lovely anguish, 

That shone so weepingly upon his breast; 

Then the white granite of his stoic chin 

Waxed tremulous, like to the marble base 

Of some proud palace by an earthquake shocked, 

Melting beneath her sorrow-haloed glance, 

Like ice-streams 'neath the warm eye of young April, 

And vehemently to his wing embrace 

He clasped her, when there from his heart upwelled, 

sadder than the epicediums 

That blasts do dirge above the graves of roses, 
These words he poured into her eager ear : 

' ' O my AUana, 1 do love thee, dearest ! 
More, more than when a little rjistic lass. 
Whose chpeks were laughter turned to rosy flesh, 
Thou first did blind me with thy ghttering, 
So fair the anointing sunshine seemed to stain thee, 
Reclining 'neath an emerald sunbeam-sieve 
That o'erpavilioned thee, and with thy fingers, 
Feeding the green-daggered grass to a pet lamb, 
E'en more than then in that so distant world ! 
E'en more than thou canst ever comprehend ! 

1 do not chide thee that thou canst not, dear ! 



lOO 

Oh no, thou dost not and thou canst not know me, 

Nor all the myriads that throng these plains ! 

I am alone, alas, I am alone ! 

I am a pinioned misery, Allana! 

Diseased am I ? No, I am a disease ; 

It is — my individuality. 

I am but now as I have ever been, 

Only my pain increases with my growth. 

List to the story of my early life, 

List to the tragedy of my e.xistence : 

I do remember when a tiny boy. 

Just tottering with my yet infant feet, 

I was e'en then a febrile weariness. 

When toys were given me they would but serve 

The hour, and then, tired, cloyed, I would hie 

Me to my mother with 'What shall I do ?' 

I was precipitated discontent ; 

My brain teemed with autochthonous conceits, 

Morbidities of gloomy wonderings ; 

I loved to roam 'round old deserted dwellings, 

At whose hingeless gates did Memory stand in tears, 

And after thunder-storms, when wind-shook leaves 

Did show their whitely-greenish undersides. 



lOI — 

And shadows romped o'er the maturing wheat, 

Where some loose shutter clattered danglingiy, 

To peer through a decaying, long-shut blind, 

Into the dim, damp, spider-peopled rooms, 

And feel a sympathetic loneliness, 

For some poor chair, imprisoned and forgot. 

Unto the craziness of my deep thinking. 

All things inanimate were animate, 

And oft I stooped to pluck a stick or leaf, 

That floated on the surface of a spring. 

Because it seemed as if it suffered theie. 

I wondered at the aspect of the skies. 

The day that I should exit this weird world, 

And if my cortege moped the summer street. 

What thoughts would spring in school-returning lads. 

Who stared the moment from their dinful games. 

The certain shaping of a cloud, the low 

Of cattle on the cold and twilight hills, 

Would freeze the joy out of my eccentric heart, 

And cut the tendons of my energy. 

The only real happiness I knew 

Was melancholy, and, Allana'dear, 

The sweetest joy is to be grandly sad. 

Pleasure is only Pain a hypocrite ! 



102 

" I learned to read ; then lived I in the past ; 
And, with the wizard wand of dusty tomes, 
I made the centuries retrace their march, 
And woke the nations from their shrouds. Upon 
The plains and mountain-passes of my brain 
They fought their mighty battles o'er again. 
My eyes were full of armies, and half-shut. 
As I did lay me on the summer-grass, 
The distant fences that begirt the farms 
Seemed legions thronging to the opening fight. 
I yearned to be a warrior ! Not that I 
Was strong, or had a heart of prowess built, 
For I was sensitive and timorous; 
So sensitive that the eternal sky 
Gazed at me till I wept; so timorous, 
The corpse-fire of the wandering, sheeted moon. 
Or the fantastic flames that pantomime 
'Round gehd axes of globes midnight-cloaked, 
And in their revelry delirious 
Do flashingly unto the zenith rush. 
Did make me feel as if I dared not live. 
No, no, it did not spring from a fierce heart 
That would exult in flame and wails and blood, 
For mine did overflow with gentleness, 



— 103— 

And saw too deep into the sense of things; 

I yearned for something I could not define, 

For something great and grand and glorious; 

Methought that in the sublime hell of war, 

Whose clangor, roar, and gride, and awful thunders 

Would seem to crack the sky from pole to pole, 

And leave a blackly zigzag figure streak 

Athwart its crystalline concavity; 

Where legions would dissolve as steamed-pierced snow, 

And the brooding blackness of the haggard smoke 

Would overcrape the frightened firmament^ 

Like the grim form of a colossal bird, 

Which, from its eyrie inaccessible, 

On the bleak mountains of some dayless world 

Had broke, and with a savage joy stirred. 

Did head his flapping league-wings hence to gorge 

Himself with horrible magnificence — 

There, in that maelstrom of heroic acts. 

My mighty hunger could be satisfied; 

I might find that which I have not yet found, 

And which, alas, I never shall— content. 

" Soon fled my youth years: with the rising sun 
Of manhood, I first learned in bitterness 



— 104 — 

The world without is not the world within; 
That that for which I hungered so was not 
A haunter of the earth, or sea, or air; 
That I who flew, forever more must creep. 
O my Allana ! then my gloomy soul 
Did flame up into fiercest metaphors; 
And all the hours that I could rob from toil 
Were spent m fashioning gigantic music 
From syllables inane, and my brain was 
A conflagration of titanic thinking; 
But poesy's divine insanity 
Did multiply by lofty appetence; 
How could I bicker, barter and engage 
In all the pettiness of clay and time. 
While all around me breathed eternity? 
And then, (mortality's worst fate) did Doubt, 
The sable fiend, abduct sweet-visaged Hope; 
And as volcanoes at the stars disgorge 
Wild hurricanes of incandescent rocks, 
Whose flame-storms but return to devastate 
The copious blooming of their verdured slopes. 
So did (O I could make it seem not else!) 
The sublimity that genius-frenzied souls 
Hurl up against the pitiless, deaf sky, 



— 105— ■ 

By the gravitation of their earthhness, 
Descend to shrivel, scorch destroyingly, 
The hope-flowers springing from their lofty sides, 
Behind the peaks of whom, huge, rugged, black, 
The sun of energy blood-red goes down ! 

" Then did I thirst for action — action — action ! 
O I did envy earthquakes and tornadoes ! 

I did almost weep to be a cyclone ! 
That in my fingers of tremendous wind 

1 might the foaming scourge of ocean seize. 
And !ash the continents mountain-vertebraed ! 
Or as children shake and topple to the ground 
The peach-globes in their rosy ruddiness, 

I might have power to shake the tree of space, 

And hurl from each immeasurable frond, 

The glittering apples of stupendous fire, 

In an inextricable, ever fall ! 

A rain of flaming worlds ! hail-storm of suns ! 

'' It was a most momentous period 

Wherein the seasons of my manhood fell ; 

Of mental throes, of feverish unrest, 

Of fearful, revolutionary wars ; 

And in that whirlpool in my prime of years 



— io6 — 

I plunged — plunged in its central rage, 

With my intensity of faculty, 

Keen, broadened twentyfold, with its desire, 

Its passion uncontrollable, to do, 

To do, to do ! And there was scope to do ! 

Yes, like a meteor I did ascend, 

Till I became my age's greatest man, 

And made upon the earth a name so great 

' Tis a monument to half its peoples now. 

Of the dim past ! Upon its lofty shaft 

They read their ancestry's biography. 

The great are tombstones of their generations. 

I did become a warrior and a king, 

A note in a world's song of destiny ; 

A continent did tremble with my armies ! 

But oh, Allana, great as I became, 

I never lost myself one single hour ! 

No dazzlingness of scheme could swallow up 

My introspective personality ; 

Unhappier than ever, fiercer raged 

The hunger deep within me, fiercer raged 

The hurricane of my career ! At last. 

Upon a world-decisive battlefield, 

Shrouded in standards, and with Victory, 



— 107 — 

For her dear purchase weeping iron tears, 
I did evacuate life's whitened fort. 

"The awful voyage of the unbodied soul, 
Hurled naked through the world-thronged universe, 
Did anchor me on this perennial strand — 
Yet how unchanged ! Still was and still I am 
A holocaust of sleepless wretchedness ! 
Around me all is deathless peace and joy ; 
Within me all is deathless strife and pain ! 
Alas, in heaven I am not satisfied. 
What I desire I know not, but do know 
Its beautiful invisibility 
Haunts me to anguish, which in ratio grows 
With my development. There is no help. 
O if I were omnipotence itself 
Felicity would garland not this brow ! 
Light would expire! The universe would be 
A wailing chaos of black agony! 

" O my Allana, I do love thee, dearest. 
Yes, infinitely more than on the earth! 
Thou art the balm and I the gaping wound. 
But oh, thou pinioned purity! fairest among 
The countless daughters of Elysium ! 



— io8— 

Though thou adorest me, and so I thee, 

And tliough thy fair cheek's sorrow doubles mine, 

My soul's deformity unfitteth it 

To make thine happy, and with thine to form 

That integer of those who here at last 

Are truly wedded; but Allana dear. 

By all the memories of that fair earth. 

By all the memories of ages here, 

Forget not I have loved thee, I do love thee! 

E'en my deformity doth worship thee!" 

Here ceased he; as he ceased, he bent 

And sealed his vehemency of remark 

Upon her snow brow with a long, long kiss, 

The while they both did weep and weep and weep! 

His tears were slow and few, like to hist drops 

Of rains long gathering and thunderless, 

That with incessant pattering do soak 

The sallow forests and the mournful hills 

Day after day. Luxuriant were hers, 

And streaming down her hopelessness of face. 

Like a drowned lily mighty as a tree 

She seemed. 



— 109 — 

What an unutterable scene 
Is Paradise at night, and on this night, 
Beside the stream where wept those seraphim! 
Placid as is the soul of a true man, 
Above them hung the concave amethyst. 
Loaded with silver plethora of worlds. 
Beside them the unruffled river rolled, 
Like liquid sky, shore crowded with great flowers. 
Half-bent almost with weight of lovely dreains. 
The very air was musical with fragrance. 
Around them, dimmed by the voluptuous dark, 
Loomed noble trees, which, had they graced this earth, 
Their dizziest boughs would have disturbed the clouds. 
From out them, from the valleys fair beyond, 
From everywhere, where roamed the tireless feet 
Of the painless peoples ever younger growing. 
Of the immortal and white-pinioned joys, ^ 

Whose breath was song, streamed music, oh, so sweet! 
It seemed as if all Heaven was harmony; 
As if her skies and groves and vales and river, 
All, all her scenery ineffable, 
Was visibility of symphony! 
O 'twas so sweet, had but one sweUing strain 
Been exiled from its home elysian. 



— no 

And with erratical velocity, 

Wandering through the unsurfaced hollow sphere 

Of the abyss of ether, had ingressed 

The air-sea of a little world like ours. 

The billion that do surge around its crust 

Would die. as did the armored myriads 

Of the Assyrian Sennacherib, 

When the death-angel swooped down o'er their tents 

At dead of night ! The shock would be too sweet; 

There would be too much glory for their dust; 

'Twould murder them with its divinity. 

Environed by the music-burdened dark, 
Which into spectres of sublimity 
Dissolved all objects, stood these seraphim, 
As if all Heaven merely was the stage 
For them their woful drama to rehearse. 
As tall as two cathedrals glittering-spired. 
Their wings were so diaphanously white. 
The sable air could not the leastly dim them. 
And in their folden silentness they seemed 
Like to the gauze ethereal of clouds, 
Whose lacteal silkiness doth frequently 
Immesh the sky-upclimbing moon until 



— Ill — 

The winds do flocculently lacerate 

Their gossamery snare, and soak each piece 

In the elixir of her silvery beams. 

As grandly as they seemed together there, — 

Statured near mountain-high, and winged 

Cloud-envyingly, and yet beautiful 

And delicate as the sweet oriole, 

That, brilliant-bosomed and pellucid-throated. 

Doth build its cosy, oscillating home, 

Its palace-pendulum of stick, string, straw, 

To the dizzy bough of an awakening tree, 

And there, mazed in the cooling, lushy leaves. 

The countless pennons of the fluttering verdure, 

Doth, through the youth and manhood of the year, 

Gush forth its infinite philosophy 

About the core of things-^they had appeared 

Incomparably grandlier insooth, 

Couldst thou in such proximity have been, 

As to have seen the battle being waged 

Upon the landscape of their lineaments. 

For 'tis upon the countenance contend 

Those knights of feelings that, implacable. 

Do populate, oft anarchize the heart. 



1 12 

Still clinging to her worshipped Alaron, 
Allana did her face upraise, and fix 
The beauteous disorder of her eye, 
Tear-emptied, full upon his wild, large orbs. 
Sunken beneath the overjutting scowl 
Of his flint brow, as livid as a storm, 
Fraught with translucent canister of hail. 
Ere it doth pounce on the battalioned corn, 
Flaunting their oriflammes of gold and green 
Defiantly e'en at the vivid daggers 
Of lightning fire scaring the timid leaves. 
And him ejaculatingly addressed 
In broken utterances that did swim 
And choke the sweeping current of her sorrow. 
Like ice-cakes tumbling in the frothmg rush 
Of northern rivers at spring's ushering. 
This, dearest, was the burden of her speech : 

'O hearken, from incomputable leagues. 
To the swelling and immortal melody, 
Bursting from the joy-uncontrollable 
Spirits of all Heaven's dazzling citizens. 
Rolling to the chorus-multiplying sky ! 
O Alaron, tears, tears in Heaven's midst! 



—113— 

What frightful inconsistency is this ? 

Of its innumerousness we alone 

Are miserable, we alone do weep 

O why art thou deformed? O why did Fate 

Burden thy being with such awful curse? 

How could it follow thee to this fair realm ? 

O thou wert born with an excess of self, 

And to be happy in this universe 

Is in precise proportion as doth flow 

The river of our own identity 

Into the ocean of a greater one ! 

O individuality — it is 

The very synonym of suffering ! 

Alas, alas, my heaven is a hell ! 

Is there no hope ? No, none can ever be, 

And oh, eternity, eternity !" 

Thus answered he the moment she did cease : 
"Brightest of Heaven's daughters, thou hast spoke 
The very essence of the truth ! I, too, 
As well as thee, know what thy tongue has said ; 
Did know it, aye, e'en when I was a man. 
Did feel it so intensely, it did chill 
The arteries of every hour with gloom. 



— 114— 

If it were but an attribute of me, 
There might be hope of a recovery . 
But I am it ! There is no cure for that 
Which is not pregnant with a germ of health. 
If it were so, if it were only so, 
Methinks that ages of development 
Might rescue from the ghastly gulf wherein 
I have been plunged by destiny. But oh. 
It doth impugn the very sense of things ! 
There is no peace — no peace, no joy for me, 
Save in the bosom of Nihility !" 

Here interrupted she his dreadful speech : 
'Thy words impugn the very sense of things ! 
O Alaron, why speak'st thou thus? Thou knowest 
That mind can die not? That the vaguest thought, 
A rushing-upward sp.irk its flame throws out, 
Revelling in a banquet-hall of dreams, 
In the sweet mansion of a maiden's brow. 
Yellowy-domed, on one of yon calm worlds, 
So dense the sky seems as a silver gauze, 
Will be as youthful when the golden hair 
Of the moon that doth inflame her sentiment 
Is grizzled with a thousand centuries ! 



—115— 

And the intangible and fair abstractions 
That haunt to tears their poor humanity 
Would be as young, as fresh, as glittering, 
Were the bright systems quenched as tapers are, 
And all the sable balls of the dead worlds 
Torn into fragments and upon them flung, 
A horrid storm of black, gigantic snow ! 

"O dearest Alaron, pain is our portion, 
An endless pain ! There's no alternative ! 
But agony partakes of joy when we 
Endure for those we love, with those we love ! 
O dearest, thou wilt never comprehend 
My love ! It seems as if all other love 
Was inextinguishable hate ! O let 
There come what will, thou shalt be mine forever 1 

Thus did he answer her in final words : 
"Allana, dearest, I have known thy love 
Was deep, unfathomable ! I have known 
Thou wert unselfishness personified ; 
And that it is the height of the unjust 
For thee to even know that there is pain. 
Suffer I must forever, for my soul 
Was built of pain, but thou, my heavenly bride. 



— ii6— 

Shalt share it not. This night, this very hour, 
I will forever flee this Paradise. 
This hour I flee, and shall not rest my wings. 
Till they have rowed me to the farthest world 
That glistens in the cavern of the dark. 
Forget me, O AUana, do forget me ! 
Erase me from the tablet of thy heart ! 
Go, join the myriads of happy ones, 
Whose songs of joy do thrill the very air 
With aching ecstasy. Thou art so pure. 
Whatever grief thou hast wilt flee thee soon. 
Go, join them, and think not on the past. 
Poignant may be thy anguish for a time. 
But in a little while it will be gone. 
The happiness thou lost wilt come again, 
And thou wilt sing through all eternity ; 
Thou wilt become as they — a winged bliss. 
Obey me, go, for it is best thou shouldst. 
Obey me, go, I must away, farewell ! 
Farewell, forever, O thou dearest one ! " 

As he did finish these, his parting words, 

So pregnant with intensity of grief 

It seemed as if despair transformed to sound. 



— 117— 

He seized her with his mighty wings, and pressed 

Her to his bosom with a fierce embrace, 

Implanting on her trembling lips a kiss, 

A kiss so full of fiery energy, 

A kiss so madly long, it seemed as if 

The love that prompted it must be destroyed 

At its cessation, must be spent in it, 

Must leave the heart as ice forevermore ; 

Then with a swift v«lition did he tear 

Their lips apart, and ere she could regain 

A foothold, he did swoop his pinions wide 

Into the odorous and balmy dark, 

As if a fragment of the milky sheet 

To which the crowding suns had made the sky 

Was floating in propinquity to her. 

Astounded by his sudden flight, she gazed 

With stupefaction blank a moment up 

At his dissolving, ere she realized 

That he her side had left. The fatal truth, 

The lightning of the tempest of her grief, 

Did fling her with a wild and wailing shriek 

Upon the fair floor of the flowery sward, 

Where her prone whiteness dimmed not by the dark, 

Did wear the seeming of a mammoth pearl. 



— ii8— 

Sing me a song, O night-haired Madeline, 
Sing me a song, and let me rest the while 
Upon the white, soft pillow of thy breast, 
For I am sick with this too lovely world ! 
Sing me some sad, grand song, until my eye, 
Freed by the magic hand of Phantasy, 
Shall circumclasp this wandering, huge ball, 
And all the ages shall become as hours, 
And the long lives of kingdoms mightiest 
Shall be by my colossal minutes spanned ! 

Sing me a song, O night-haired Madeline! 

What friend is there to man more dear than music ? 

When every silken banner of his hope 

Lies trailed and tattered in the mires of life, 

And the cold naked days drag by like hearses. 

Then doth she steal unto his faithless ear. 

And with her golden throat she says to him, 

" Dim though thy lot, forget not thou art great," 

And then she grasps his groping hand and leads 

Him down beneath the seemingness of things ! 

She is the Gabriel of the dead past; 

She soareth down from Heaven, and singeth o'er 

The cemeteries of the withered Years, 



— 119— 

And lo, they all upwing from their dim tombs, 
Not in the forms apparelled they were when 
The crimson brooklets of our early blood 
Did sparkle, leap and purl, in unison 
With the felicity of their sweet hfe, 
But robed in bodies incorporeal. 
Forms spiritual radiantly sad. 

Sing me a song, O night-haired Madeline, 
Until the moon, night's wizard sculpturess. 
Shall leave the white pavilion of yon cloud. 
Then when she makes a statue of thy face, 
And putteth a weird glitter in thy eye, 
I will resume my sad wild narrative. 

PART II. 

Scarcely a moment from the doleful time 

That Alaron did flee Elysium, 

Soaring as softly, gracefully aboon, 

As doth the galley of a great, pale cloud, 

Steered by the pilot of a lonely wind 

Close to the light-house of the western moon, 

Ere distance had devoured him; ere alone. 

With naught save the strength of his unflagging wing 

Partitioning from an unending fall, 



— I 20 — 

Without a destination save on, on, 

Alas, yet his own being keeping pace, 

He swept into the dim, stupendous vacancy 

Of all-embracing space. Yet what feared he? 

Oft cowards seem valiant allied with despair, 

Then what dares not the one whose heart of ste«l 

Is reinforced by the desert of hope? 

Many a day, (that is of this earth's time, 
For there the inexorable guillotine 
Of darkness cleaves not the continuous light 
Into sad pieces by the name of days,) 
He soared him thro" the twilight voiceless, vast, 
Brooding o'er the unbounded hole of space. 
Above, below, around, there rolled and shone 
Incomputable globes, yet paused he not, 
But rather shunned their bosoms populous. 
At last he reached the outskirts of the stars. 
The boundaries of the fire-pinioned worlds, 
The frontiers of creation, where they join 
The immeasurable nothingness beyond. 
Yet, in the madness of his deep despair, 
He paused not here, but wildly hurled himself 
Into the infinite and frigid gloom. 



121 

No sooner did the blankness and the cold 
Of that most horrible vacuity 
Seize his volition than it was depowered, 
Than all the energies that thused the wingS 
That tireless had sustained so far a flight, 
Were as if they were not, and he, oh he. 
Hopeless in spirit, powerless in wing, 
Shot through the suffocating spissitude 
Of the bewildering black with a velocity 
That would arraign a gleam of yonder moon 
With dragging indolence; yet through it all. 
He sensed and he conceived, for what can kill, 
Or numb, or dull the piercing consciousness 
Of the pure essence of the immortal mind 
Freed from the Chillon of its sleepy diist ? 
For full a month of our terrestrial time, 
Down through that frigid smothering of black 
He fell. Who can conceive the simoom thoughts 
That must have swept the desert of his soul, 
As with that consciousness intense he felt 
His situation — -banished from creation ; 
The only something in an endless nothing, 
If the dense blackness was a substance not; 
Yet banished by an edict of himself. 



122 

It was not endless, though it seemed to be, 

For terminated was that headlong fall; 

But where ? There was a change discernible 

In the monotonous and blinding gloom; 

At last its stifling grew less sickening, 

When constantly more slow became his fall. 

And lo, the grimness of that beamless night 

Was softened to a melancholy dusk. 

And suddenly full length he struck — a world ! 

It was a ponderous world of pallid ice; 

Strewn with the pale and gaping jaws of chasms, 

And the eternal ghosts of mighty crags; 

It was a desolate and frozen hell; 

It seemed like to a graveyard of destruction; 

As if all earthquakes and tremendous storms, 

That ever shattered the space-swimming orbs, 

And the worse earthquakes of poor, human souls, 

(For what are crumbling capitals compared 

To the sad chaos of a single heart ?) 

Were interwove in a gigantic lump 

Of demolition and turned into ice; 

His bright form was transformed into a clod 

Of rugged and indissoluble ice. 

Within whose dungeon of gelidity 



— 123— 

His sleepless energies were stirless chained; 
His being was conceptive and as keen 
As ever. He could plan and he could will, 
But powers of action were forever gone; 
And there he moveless lay, just where he fell, 
Close to the edge of a grim precipice. 

Deem'st thou that world was not inhabited? 

If so, thy inference is very wrong; 

For it was populated by a tribe, 

A tribe of spectres of prodigious size; 

As if the exhalations white and thick, 

That midnights sheet malarious marshes, were 

Shaped into mile-high giants, and endowed 

With action and with thought. No passion raged 

Within those breasts gigantically cold , 

For they, as everything, were like their source. 

The chmate is the mother of the heart; 

Thy very thoughts and words, O Madeline, 

Are ancestored by mountains, clouds and winds. 

They were the remnants of a mighty race. 

That loved not peace, but organized revolt 

Against the order of the universe; 

And beaten, overwhelmed and headlong hurled, 



124 — 

Were sentenced o'er this world-corse horrible 

As ghosts to roam forever. Ages fled 

While yet was waged that conflict, till at last, 

After the universe had been convulsed, 

And all the voices of the hymning orbs 

Were drowned in discord, the two captams met, 

The two grand leaders of those warring throngs 

Met in stupendous duel. In midspace, 

Each standing on a trembling world, with swords 

Torn from the flames of red and boiling hell, 

For full a hundred years they battled there, 

Till pierced and cloven fell the renegade 

From his high vantage-ground into the dark. 

With all his armies, who, disheartened then, 

Followed their general without a stand ! 

Not long did Alaron unnnoticed lay. 

A multitude of those titanic ghosts 

From every quarter hither sped and swarmed 

Around him. When his wings they did perceive, 

Of his extraction high symbolical, 

A silent rage, an icy cruelty 

Sabled their visages intangible, 

And one in stature far the mightiest 



— 125 — 

Did seize him in his sinewy shadow-hands, 
Did Hft him far above his head, the length 
Of his enormous arms, and, holding him 
A moment to the gaze of that pale throng, 
Did hurl him down into the grim abyss 
That ebonly did yawn close at his feet ; 
And, at the bottom of a thousand leagues 
Of smothering blackness, cofifined icily 
Tn form indomitable to his will. 
Yet with as clear, and keen, and deep a thought, 
And aspiration restless, madly high. 
As when he mused aneath the glowing trees, 
And wandered in the vales of Paradise, 
And was with music ever banqueted, 
We now will leave him, dearest Madeline, 
And hasten back to where AUana lay. 
Wearing the seeming of a mammoth pearl. 
Yes, we will hasten, for my dearest one, 
Waxing too sad am I with this strange tale. 
And too long musing on such dreadful dreams. 
And too long voyaging o'er the isleless main 
Of deep abstraction, hilled to scowling surges 
By -hurricanes of black imaginings. 
Doth anarchize and wreck mentality. 



126 

It is the birth of day in Paradise! 

Eternity is lifting his black axe! 

Yester is amputated to the past, 

But oh, no arteries of memory, 

Bleeding and mangled as on earthly days, 

Are telegraphing their divorcing pain 

To the loneliness of the lamenting morrow. 

The angels never weep for yesterdays. 

We weep for yesterdays, because we are 

So greater than this rebus of our breath. 

Such flames of lofty capability. 

Haunting with sweet, consoling haughtiness, 

So vitally do blaze along our bloods. 

The blanket of our lusts, though smothering oft, 

In the heart's interregnum of misdeeds, 

Can never, never quench, and they surcharge. 

At every opportunity of theirs. 

With such a glory-plethora our sight. 

It deluges the future and the past! 

Then are the far-off morrows equal to us, 

Which soon, alas, are naught but blank to-days! 

Then we forget the perjury of the past 

In our ingenuously sweet delight. 

And do enrobe the meager skeletons 



\ 



— 127 — 

Of days when breathing we did scarcely notice, 

With such a radiance of flesh and soul, 

We weep that we shall clasp them nevermore! 

It is our loftiness that sires our tears. 

The greatest of this earth have ever been 

Burdened with a sublime unhappiness ; 

The angels never weep for yesterdays, 

For satiate are all their faculties ; 

And the augmenting joys of their to-days, 

Which infinite to-morrows all shall be, 

Outshines each glory-painted yesterday 

As doth the sun the dipper of the north. 

It is the birth of day in Paradise ! 

Who, who can limn with words an earthly dawn, 

When every struggling and brave eastern star 

Dissolves into the widening van of light 

Like some grand heart into the grander heart 

Of all humanity, or later, when 

The orient is a carbuncle sea. 

Dappled w-ith isles of nomad sardonyx, 

Seeming like golden icebergs that do sport 

And swim like glittering, gigantic dolphins, 

And shored with Himalayas emerald. 



— 128 — 

With huge volcanoes of divinest snow 
Burning with purple fire, or later, when 
The freshened sun doth leap into the dome, 
Like a meteor image in a poet's brain, 
Laughing the hills to sweet fertility, 
Glancing the \vorld into a gorgeous prayer ? 
Then how, O Madeline, can I depict 
On the mimosa canvas of thy brain, 
The ushering of light in Paradise, 
The fair decease of that elysian night, 
Wherein the grief of bright Allana's heart 
Did bind her wings and fling her to the flowers ? 

It is the birth of day in Paradise ! 
O multiply the glories of this world 
Until the intellect aches dizzily 
Endeavoring to comprehend the times. 
Then wouldst thou be as far below the truth 
As is yon herd of cloud leviathans, 
Ranking the summit of the northern hills, 
Below the shimmer of the Pleiades ! 
O yes, for there were colors in that land 
So beautiful they would destroy us should 
Their faintest reflex sweep into our ken : 



— 129 — 

Such colors that the hues that gaud this ball. 
Admitted to their presence, recognized, 
Would seem unsightly and repugnant blots. 

O Madeline, although our hearts are full 

Of a sublimity of flattery, 

When we look out upon this edifice. 

Our lovely home in this God-woven world , 

That reasons with such rapturous discourse 

Of our innate respectability. 

As life's fleet span is to eternity. 

So is the furnishing of our fair house. 

The beauty that doth paint its walls and floor. 

Unto that central ganglion of beauty, 

Unto that beauty which must somewhere glow, 

To which the splendor of this roUing world 

Is but a mist breathed from the vagrant spray 

Spattered from an unfathomable sea. 

O holy spirit of the Beautiful, 
Thou, who'rt the sea-weed of our voyage here, 
Whether thy subtile percolations haunt 
The sweet, symphonious reasonings that throng 
The halcyon brain of the geometer, 
Whether thou dost assume the martyr's mask; 
9 



— 130— 

And personatest valor on the field, 
And hauntest in a hut some loving act ; 
Or whether thou dost saturate the stars, 
And grass, and clouds, and nervous foliage, 
That doth allure the dazzling light of noon 
Into the fanned shade of its juicy green. 
And there doth shatter it with restlessnesss. 
Bespattering the beryl brook below 
With mangled sunshine, thou art but the same. 
We see thee but through different three eyes. 
Thou art three spiritual telegraphs, 
That marry heaven to humanity — 
Clay-coffined scintillants of God ! 

It is the birth of day in Paradise! 

And, as the morning grew, so did the strength 

Of the pain-prostrate angel, that did lay 

Wrapped in a drapery of fragrant dark, 

Roofed by the leafy ceiling of a tree. 

To which the ligneous Titans of the earth 

Are like the humble weeds whose lives are spent 

At the toxic feet of some slim flaming flower, 

Whose haughty dazzle roots itself in swamps ! 

Slow from the downy fragrance of her couch 

Uprose that beauteous sorrow, while the sun 



— T3I — 

Did burst the levees of the red horizon, 

Not merely overflowing Paradise, 

But with a heaven-broad storm of laughing gold 

So swiftly sky-deep drowning it, the stars 

And marcid moon were quenched without a smoke. 

And in stupendous radiance she stood. 

That almost dulled the flashings copious 

Of rushing sunlight, dripping from her wings ! 

In fathomless reflection did her soul 

Imbibe the blazing tumult of the east, 

Toward which she turned with such unflinching glance, 

That every tear that trickled down her cheek 

Did tumble to the flowers a silver sphere. 

Ringed Saturn-like with many-colored bows. 

Then did a glittering restlessness usurp, 

As if each were an imitated east, 

The blank tranquility of the blue gloom 

That hitherto suffused those hopeless eyes. 

And all around convulsively she gazed, 

Above, below, but lastly steadily 

She fixed her glance upon the growing day, 

And from her heart these words she swiftly dirged : 

Farewell, ye glorious regions, fare ye well ! 
Farewell, immortal trees, ye, whose bright ranks, 



— 132— 

Far-Stretching toward the gHstering of morn. 

Are laughing towers of lustrous emerald ; 

Aneath thy odorous shade, where I have roamed 

So many thousand years, sing I no more. 

Farewell, thou river, azure molten mirror, 

Upon whose musical and moving breast, 

Unnumbered evenings I have beheld 

The gathering stars, like vain and timid maids, 

Gaze at their own pure, shining visages. 

Good-bye, flower-mantled valleys, and ye mountains, 

Whose rugged lips the sky stoops down to kiss. 

Good-bye, fair land, thou music of my eyes. 

And thou, O sun, heart of the universe, 

Grand-flaming rose, whose opening petals flood 

All Heaven with golden and vivific fragrance. 

Good-bye, for I shall leave ye all forever ; 

Though I shall lose ye all, yet shall I gain, 

For your immortal and unsullied beauty 

Doth multiply my anguish, torturing me 

With that which I, alas, can never be. 

Though I shall lose ye all, yet shall I gain, 

For I shall find at last, sometime, somewhere, 

The refuge of my dearest Alaron, 

And though by some relentless destiny 

He is misformed in spiritual essence. 



Being so greater far than other angels, 
That that which happy maketh them to be 
Doth make him wretched and unsatisfied, 
And therefore doth unfit him for the love, 
The love the wedded here do have, to be 
With him, most miserable as I am, 
Methinks would soft the midnight of my grief 
Into a cold, dim twiHght, though we were 
Chained in the cavern of a hideous hell ! 
And so, my Alaron, I come to thee; 
Where'er thou art, my love, I come to thee." 

So said, into the broad, exulting morn, 
Like to a maddened meteor, she plunged 
Upward, still upward, ever upward, till 
Tangled among the crimson clouds that flecked 
The burning dawn, she seemed a bird of snow, 
Flying before a flock of garnet eagles. 

Waxing too sad am I with this dim tale; 
A vague and dazzling chaos seems my thought; 
And ere long (O, too soon) the hoiden Day 
Comes swaggering up out the grizzled east, 
Therefore, O, Madeline, the end is near. 



— 134— 

After an age of starward wandering, 
And searching vain o'er many a rushing world, 
She reached at last the awful boundaries, 
Into whose depths her Alaron had fell, 
And into which, in her despair, she dared 
Like him, and with a similar result. 
She struck the bosom of that mangled sphere, 
That frozen sepulchre of dead convulsion. 
The shadowy arms of the enormous ghosts 
Hurled her in the abyss where he did lay, 
And she did fall close to his prostrate side; 
And there with but the gift of speech to glad 
The beamless eternity of their despair. 
They two must lie, are lying now; and could 
A road be built to Alcyone's fire, 
And could some splendid-armored insect take 
A little particle of this huge globe. 
An easy burden on its glittering back, 
And walk that dizzy pathway to its end. 
And plunge it into that grand, raging sun, 
When finally this world should be consumed, 
The first, the faintest dapple of the dawn 
Would scarcely streak the morning of forever. 
1881. 



— 135— 



THE MAID OF THE WESTERN PALACE. 

Infinite leagues toward the uttermost west 

Is an isle that is clasped by a singing sea, 
In its azure arras, to its flashing breast, 

And it kisses it all the eternity. 
And that lovely isle in the uttermost west 

Is fairer than ever a heaven can be, 
Tho' blooming its banks with the best and the blest; 

'Tis a cloud of the dawn in the sky of that sea, 

O that lovely isle in the uttermost west 

Is cleft from our world by a craftless stream, 
All inky, inspissate and bitterest. 

And the subtlest shaft of impalpable dream 
Ever faileth to pierce the pale fog that doth rest 

As a sheet on the corse of that tide, yet I deem 
With the reflexive ghost of that isle we are blest, 

When the west makes us gods for the time with its gleam . 

Long ago in the north-space a terrible Storm 
Spread its wings and flew down in the shivering crowd 

Of the panic-struck worlds; where it paused to deform 
The most radiant planet rebelliously proud; 



—136— 

With its blast-claws uprooted the undying buds, 
And shattered them into a spherical heap, 

And flung them afar, but they fell in the floods 
Of the west, where they lay like a sunset asleep. 

Then that musical sea of the uttermost west 

All sparkling and singing and kissing the while, 
Ran roUingly round them with never a rest. 

Till it fondled them into this wonderful isle; 
And a beautiful bird it doth seem as it blooms 

In the lonely joy of that sea -of the west. 
And forests of flowers are its feathers and plumes, 

And a mile thick of flowers is its gorgeous breast. 

On the verge of that radiant island of bloom, 

A castle of beryl, octagonal, made 
From one jewel enormous, doth haughtily loom, 

And its noble, diaphanous roof is arrayed 
With bonniest banners of garnet and gold, 

And a diamond maid on its summit stands. 
And her tresses are oozy, her cheek is yet cold, 

As she points to the west with her clammy hands. 

The castle was cut from the tranquil tide 
By the wizard sword of a mermaid fair. 



—137— 

'Tis a piece of the ocean solidified, 
And she clove it out and she set it there; 

O'er the purple glass of that wide, wide sea. 

The sunsets Night shattered and spilled she did seize, 

And the banners all waving so gloriously. 

Are but woven of these, are but woven of these. 

In the vermeil grot of a giant flower 

A beautiful youth made his hermit home. 
And he saw her to soar one evening hour 

To the pinnacle of that purple dome, 
Whose spherical azure doth seem to the eyes 

As the sky to a soul's unimpeded glance, 
Looking down from a trellis of Paradise, 

For convexive there is its bright expanse. 

She was sprinkling sparkles of silver and pearl 

Into radiant shapes o'er that roof of blue. 
And each corner was crowned with a golden girl. 

And their mild brows were haloed with rainbow hue, 
And each held in her fingers a seven-stringed lyre, 

And their deep eyes yearned o'er the singing sea ; 
I will tell you, good friend, if you desire 

Where all of these marvelous treasures found she : 



-138- 

When the moonshine did trickle thro' tremulous trees, 

Every gobleted flower that did gaze on high, 
Unshaken, unswayed by the odor-gyved breeze, 

O'erran its bright rim with this wine of the sky; 
And she filled her palm in these moonshine springs, 

And soared to the top of her castle fair, 
And hard'ning that water to glitterings, 

Its petrified sparkles she spattered there. 

Now down in the dells of those jungles of bloom. 

The sunshine made many a gorgeous brook, 
Whose tide was the marriage of gleam and perfume. 

And she out of their pools the material took 
For the girls and their lyres, but the crowns that they wore 

Were different woven, for, strange as it seems, 
With a palmful of shine she leaned o'er the fringed shore 

And kneaded them out of sweet ripples and beams. 

She was spangling and starring the azure dome, 
And she stood enqueened on its lofty top. 

When the youth who made in a flower his home. 
Saw the ^wizard sword from her grasp to drop, 

Saw the sword which had cloven a piece of the sea, 
And hardened it into a castle fair. 



—139— 

And he picked it up, when she saw him, and she 
To a diamond maiden did crystallize there. 

To a diamond maiden did crystallize then, 

And with clammy fingers and oozy hair, 
Ever gazed at the west, but intensest when 

The blood ball of the sun, like a wretch in despair, 
Plunged into the liquid, cool music of sea, 

And the grand sky did seem where had flamed its form, 
Like an ocean of melted jewelry 

Tumbled star-high by an infinite storm. 

In that castle of beryl he made his home. 

Where he mused out ages of sweetest dream, 
For the flesh must pause if the bright thoughts roam , 

And they labor together not well I deem ; 
And he wondered on what that maiden gazed, 

That diamond maiden that gazed on the west. 
With a yearning stare when its curtains blazed, 

And he followed her eyes with a fierce unrest ; 

And he followed her eyes in vain, in vain. 

For the burning Eden of that wide sky 
Did bloodily glare a blinding pain 

In the wishful sweep of his longing eye ; 



— 140 — 

But though failure for ages was his doom, 
One halcyon hour when even's dusk wings 

With the wakening worlds began to bloom, 
Laurelled success his endeavorings. 

For under the blade of the crescent moon. 

O'er the tremulous glass of those prairies of sea, 
Where its orange sword would be sunken soon. 

There rose a palace magnificently ; 
Rose a wonderful palace weird and pale, 

As if woven of columns of moon-painted smoke, 
Which happiest homes on a Christmas exhale. 

When from their dear circles no segments are broke ; 

As if built of the mist that doth dream o'er the hills, 

When the forests are dying their shining death. 
And cold is the blue of the pondering rills. 

And the world's deep thought makes it hold its breath; 
And the indolent banners its towers overstreaming 

Were as goldenly weird as if wove of the zone 
That circles the bosom of night, ever seeming 

A sun-paven road to the central throne. 

It rose and it fell with those halcyon plains, 
Whose purple did heave like a love-raptured breast, 



—141— 

To a singing more sweet than the soundless strains 

Haunting the heart in hours godliest; 
And thro' its east window a sweet light shone, 

Like a sapphire torch, and the littea room 
Of the dusky palace that rose there alone 

Seemed like a thought in the brain's cold gloom. 

From the lofty casement a maiden did lean. 

As fair as a thought of a fetterless mind. 
That, robed in its pinions of dustless sheen, 

Astounds the star-glances its flight flings behind. 
And the music that flowed from her wave-lulling tongue, 

And rhymed with the song of her radiant harp. 
Was sweeter than music by memory sung, 

And a seraph's to hers would be raspingly sharp. 

And she beckoned and beckoned and beckoned to him, 

O'er the quivering sky of that wide, wide sea. 
Till his shackled eyes they were waxing dim 

With the pain of their visual ecstasy; 
And his beautiful isle seemed dark and cold. 

And ugly to him grew his blooming home. 
So brighter the vision he did behold 

Of the maiden who beckoned him to her to come. 



142 — 

And he took the wizard sword, and he clove 

From the tide a cerulean canoe, 
And over that ocean began to rove, 

When from the west such a wild wind blew 
That his purple caique was o'erblown and sank, 

But he struck a wave and it grew as rock. 
And each wave he struck grew a purple bank, 

And over those slopes of the sea did he stalk; 

And over those violet pastures ran he. 

Like a meteor trailing the moonless dome, 
To the maiden who sang so enchantingly 

In the east window-eye of her misty home; 
And over those violet pastures ran he, 

Till he stood him beneath that casement bright, 
When the love in her face glowed so radiantly, 

It lifted him up to that lofty height. 

And he clasped that maiden so beautiful. 

Who shone in the window that faced the east, 

When her eyes they grew to a staring dull. 
And the harmony of her harping ceased. 

And those features so lovely they pained the eye, 
Grew ashenly withered and hollowly cold, 



— 143— 

And her arms waxed meager and skeletonly, 
That western maiden he did enfold. 

And he wanders and weeps thro' the shadowy halls, 

Of that ghostly palace that rose in the west, 
And he wailingly to that maiden calls, 

But she deafly stares at his vain quest; 
And the wizard sword he lost in the sea, 

Those azure meadows he never can roam, 
Across which forever piteously 

He beholdeth his radiant island-home. 



— 144- 



EXTRACTS FROM KALLOTRON. 

O Stars, 
Ye clustering and constellated flowers, 
Silver bouquets of amaranthine bloom, 
How I have loved ye from my earliest days, 
And I do mind me when a little child. 
Ere Poesy did rule the land of Mind, 
In that majestic hour of closing day. 
When the roseate blush on Twilight's cheek 
Is melting into dreamy lavender, 
When the tremulous wave doth clasp the moon, 
And Philomela in the odorous grove, 
Doth ravish every wind with melody, 
I've wandered far from childhood's happy din, 
And laid me in the long and summer grass, 
And watched ye as ye swam out one by one 
And shimmered in the blue, and then methought 
That ye were beacons angels lit along 
The coasts of Heaven for huge ships of cloud, 
That wandered the immeasurable sea. 
Piloted by pirates of the rugged winds. 



—145— 

And then again, that ye were characters 

Of some celestial tongue the pen of God 

Had traced upon the tablet of the sky, 

Which, could I but translate, it would unfold 

The awful mystery of everything, 

It would reveal the destiny of man. 

And when the West Wind drove his chariot 

Along the galaxy-inwoven floors. 

And clove to shreds some great cloud-banner hung 

Upon the wall of Night, and the grand Moon, 

With the sweet incantation of her eye. 

Did color them like Earth's most lovely flowers, 

Methought them honeysuckles and sweet peas 

Of Heaven's June, and ye were silver bees 

That sipped the honey from their winsome lips. 



O mysterious Moon, 
Mother of fascinations and sweet spells. 
From the keen disks of the worlds luminous, 
To the mmutest flower that dreams beside 
The sinuous silver of the sleeping stream. 
With eye-lids fastened and soft-held by pearls 
Of tepid dew, all homage pay to thee. 



— 146 — 

What time thou liftest up thine amber brow, 
The Titan poplar and the austere elm, 
Silent, submissive, at their shadows gaze. 
The spirits of the brooks do softlier sweep 
The watery chords of their pellucid lutes, 
And e'en the rocky steeps and fastnesses 
Of yon romantic glen no more are stern, 
But soft as grassy slope or maiden cheek. 

Into her chariot 
She leapt, then urging her impatient birds 
With gentle orders forward, they obeyed 
With lightning ardor, and the first swift lash 
Their wings wide-sweeping gave the yielding air, 
The chariot and its occupants did shoot, 
Like the silver arrow of a beam of light. 
Thousands of miles into the hollow night. 
Thused with the liberty of uncurbed space. 
On, on, still on the coursers rapid dash, 
Swift as association's ghosts of past. 
Flitting among the winding passages 
And dim and echoing halls of Memory, 
At the beck of Perfume and of Harmony. 
The moon grows larger, ever larger; now 



— T47— 

It so completely fills their narrow ken, 

That the remaining blue of heaven is 

A crescent; now they pass it and it grows 

As swiftly smaller till it is a speck, 

And now it melteth like a flake of snow. 

Now they approach the congregated stars, 

And hear the fabled music of the throats, 

Of those immortal, glittering nightingales, 

Singing in the eternal wilderness 

Of their unfading, radiant light; and now 

They thread the intricate, dim paths of those 

Forests of briUiancy, and as a beam 

Of sunlight fiittetb down a stream of June, 

So glide they 'mid the ring-hke streams of space 

That circumclasp those countless starry isles. 

But ever tireless on and on they dash ; 

As they did deeper sink into the tide 

Of odor-air, the birds did fold their wings. 

Did float down through it like an autumn cloud, 

Or thistle's sphered feather on a breath 

Of June, and slowly from the Spirit fell 

Her mantle of invisibility, 

E'en as the robe of Day falls from the Night. 



—148— 

At first she was as shapeless as a smoke, 

But, gradually, as they deeper sank, 

Evolved a form, until as when they were 

Within a thousand miles of the blest world, 

And soon will rest upon a mountain-top, 

As did the ark of old on Ararat. 

She came forth into perfectness of grace, 

More fair than any offspring ever sired 

By Ideality, or Phantasy 

And all her shining progeny of dreams. 

And now at last the voyage long is o'er ; 

The ship of space whose sails were wings of birds, 

Filled with the winds of their own energy, 

Is anchoring in port felicitous, 

And safe translated in Kallotron there. 

Far, far from all the cold and cruel world, 

For soft as dew falls on the violet. 

They touch the summit of a mighty mount. 

So high the lovely colored clouds did put 

Their silver arms about its emerald neck. 

There was an undertone of mournfulness 

In its huge form. It looked like some lone bard, 

Wrapped in its own originality, 



— 149— 

Communing with the dirges of the sea, 

And as with unavaihng strive it tried 

To pierce the overhanging, crystal blue, 

It seemed like one of those sad, restless guests, 

Who haunt the halls of certain human souls, 

And with implorings piteous do reach 

Forever purposeless into the air, 

For something which instinctively they crave 

With hunger deep, yet know not what or where. 

And here they paused, and thus the spirit spake 

Unto Kallotron for the fijst time since 

They had embarked from the bleak precipice, 

"Mortal, thou art safely anchored 

In the world of Beauty's Queen ; 
All for which thou hast so hankered 

Soon by thy earth eyes is seen ; 
Thou shalt quaff from this star-tankard 

Odor, symphony and sheen, 
Till their Nile of joy is married 

To thy parched and stunted powers, 
Till thy spirit's desert arid 

Blooms and flashes with fair flowers. 

■ "All the never-sleeping yearning, 



— 150— 

All the doom of thy despair, 
All the agonizing burning 

Which thy thoughts' disease did bear, 
Shall be lost in thy discerning 

As the stars in morning are, 
And each leaf that time is turning 

Of thy spirit's bitter book, 
Shall be sweet with lofty learning, 

Look, O mortal, look, O look !" 

As she articulated the command 

That closed the crystal warole of her speech. 

She flaunted her bright arm with graceful wave 

Thrice to and fro above his head, and then 

She pressed his forehead with her magic palm, 

When lo, though he not disembodied was, 

The clogging curtains of mortality 

Fell from the sunken disks of his dim eyes, 

As dizzy clouds oft from the climbing moon, 

When she is half way up the convex slope 

Of the blue mountain of the naked night. 

All which before her touch was indistinct 

And filmed and even undiscernible. 

To his perception most put out with clay. 



—151— 

Arose in their minutest features and caressed 

And clasped his'subtile spiritual sight, 

And from his mountain standpoint towering, 

The countenance of the celestial world, 

In all its beauty and sublimity. 

Lay stretched before him like an open book. 

Oh where, oh where, are words divine enough 

Whose pinions may be freighted with the scene ! 

The change the spirit wrought upon his eyes 

Had metamorphosed everything to him. 

The mountain on whose everlasting top 

He and the spirit were, swift as the bolt, 

Unseen and unforeseen, with which the Past 

Oftimes our sensitiveness shattereth, 

Did lose its gloomy and its earthly look ; 

It was a vast unutterable pearl. 

White as the tablet of an infant's soul, 

And yet it was but one of a great chain. 

The night was fleeing and prolific Time 
Was giving birth unto another day. 
As if they were the ruins of a Heaven, 
Piled clouds, promiscuously glorious, 
Haloed the blue eternity of east. 



/' 



— 152 — 

And from their radiant confusion did 
Morning mount in her phaeton of gold, 
Like to a Phoenix of immortal fire, 
And pausing on the utmost pinnacle 
Of a wing of one of the angelic mounts 
Of pearl, she plucked swiftly, one by one, 
With fingers of keen light, the silver grapes 
From the dense, teeming vineyards of the stars. 

Where the fair valley with its tinted hands 

The mountains' pearly clasped, and they did flow 

And mingle in each other's being, as 

The swarthy, melancholy evening 

And afternoon gay-cheeked and sunny-curled, 

A wilderness of roses great, to each 

Of whom the mightiest forest-Ogs of earth 

Are pigmies, stunted, insignificant, 

Did burgeon, bloom and blush ineflfablv, 

And when fair morning, as ye plucked the stars, 

Did lean to kiss the moon emaciate, 

The coruscation of her countenance 

Baptized the mountains' rose-embroidery. 

And in an instant all the niyiiad leaves 

Of the myriad mighty roses altars were, 



— 153— 

Sparkling with the blaze of the adoring dew, 
Which sacrilegious zephyrs in their glee, 
Wrestling beneath each leaf-dome odorous, 
Did tumble from their pink and silken censors, 
The kindled drippings rained like tears of stars, 
And the whole forest quivered with the spell 
Of the sweet tinkle of the singing fire. 

Innumerable climbing tendrils wound 

Themselves in spiral elegance about 

The beauteous protection of each trunk, 

And fondly clung as vision-frighted babes 

Around their mothers. From each tendril hung 

Innumerable tiny blossomings 

Shaped by the chisel of the Sculptor high 

To bells exquisite of white daintiness, 

And when the nerves of the rose-forest thrilled 

With tinghng ecstasy, swift sympathy 

Did swing with graceful tremulousnesses 

Each delicately woven bell, did clang 

Their petals sensitive against their ribs 

All snowy, silken, soft and crystalline. 

Then from the yearning harps of their clear throats 

Arose a chime so wondrous beautiful. 



— 154— 

A symphony so vast yet fine and sweet, 

That the grand mountains, as they heard it, felt 

As would a spirit of poetic mould. 

If it were lost in an eternity 

Of music, fragrance and intensest bloom. 

Far distant thro' the valley's heart there moved 

With still, slow pace, the azure artery 

Of a wide river. In luxuriant coils 

And lazy curvings did it wind itself 

Along the flower-frescoed, glowing fields, 

And in lethargic sinuousness seemed 

Like a cerulean, sleeping serpent gorged 

With the effulgence of the scenery. 

'Twas the recipient of a cataract 

Of crystal, dazzling water which did pour 

From a mountain, off a precipice of pearl, 

Where all day long with loom of golden spray 

The industrious beams wove glittering crowns 

And lovely garlands for its stainless brow. 

And here came multitudes of singing swans. 

Like shapes of music-animated snow. 

And lashed the tangled rainbows with their wings. 

And grappled with the torrent's silver glee, 

And then aweary, in drowse lethean, 



—155— 

Did noiseless float adown the azure lawns 

Of the sparkle-blossomed stream, where its wild song, 

And dashings restless and irrascible, 

Melt into ripplings of tranquility. 



If thou hast ever stood at eventide, 
When, (as once in classic eld fair Hebe at 
The banquets of the congregated gods. 
Did proffer to their majesties divine 
The nectared goblet, ) lovely twilight doth 
Pass to the revels of the assembhng stars 
The crescent beaker of the western moon, 
Blushing and bubbling to its yellow verge 
With the dead sunset's rich and ruby wine. 
And, with a heaven in your heart, hast felt 
The voiceless poetry of singing tears 
Burst the exalted cisterns of the eyes 
And copiously flood the flushing cheek, 
If so, then know thou that thy ecstasy, 
Thy god-like pleasure of aspiring heart, 
Was not of firmament's incarnadine. 
Nor wail of whippoorwill, nor thrill of trees, 
Nor sad-eyed planets in their wordless drama. 
But of the spirit of the universe. 



-156- 

That mysterious intelligence that lives and breathes, 

And doth exhale itself from everything. 

The subtle something we name beautiful 

Is but the medium, the flawless lens, 

Thro' which our souls do hear the harmony 

Between them and this omnipresent soul. 

The lofty pleasure we experience 

Is but the spell of this sweet harmony. 



If ever thou hast fled the paths of men; 
And pondered on the towers of garnered hills, 
In vales deflowered and by mute, blue rills. 
When with a pen of frost the Sybil winds 
Do write their prophecies upon the leaves. 
When Summer kisses Earth a fond good-bye, 
And all the trees are beautiful with death. 
And from some simple and sequestered cot, 
Pillowed in the arms of a protecting glen. 
Whose door, lonely, for all its flowers are gone. 
Is yet ajar, comes a sad harmony 
Forth from the melancholy organ's lips, 
At the sweet bidding of a little girl, 
And they have floated tranquilly to thee, • 
Borne by the dreaminess of the dim air, 



—157— 

And stirred thy heart with something fathomless — 

Say, in that holy egoism of soul, 

Hast thou not seemed a seer, and longed to shout 

This noble knowledge in the ears of men. 

That somewhere in the singing universe, 

There is a music of which we know not, 

A glorious and central harmony. 

Of which our ditties are but shadows poor? 

Beneath the lofty and the purple dome 

Of a bouquet-like grove of amaranths. 

Alone, and musing Hke an autumn day, 

Tall as a palm-tree, did Kallotron spy 

A dazzling, unimaginable shape. 

It was as beautiful as is the warm 

And yellow harvest moon, when islanded 

In the cerulean infinity, 

Majestical it soars upon night's noon, 

A golden condor on its azure crags. 

And like a vahant soldier to his queen. 

Each warrior of the cohort^ of the corn. 

Salutes her with his green and flashing lance, 

And in the wild womb of the wooded hill. 

Across the pond's floor fretted o'er with stars, 

The gloomy coon ejaculates his wail. 



-158- 

And all the heart-strings of the forest-seers 
Mourn for the wrinkles on the cheek of Year. 
It was the Queen of Beauty in her bower. 
A mantle was flung round her form as fair 
As if the sunsets of a thousand worlds 
Were ravished for its dyes. Her gleaming hair 
Was all the crown she needed, for her brow 
And neck and marble bosom were o'erflown 
And inundated with its copious gold. 
Her eyes were introverted, yearning blue. 
Like fragments of the sky of Paradise. 
O such a wondrous face ! It seemed as if 
The loom that wove that countenance divine 
Had all the endless mines of color, shape, 
Lavished, exhausted in producing it. 
It seemed as if the pencil which had traced 
Expression's poesy upon her face, 
Shown not alone its genius, but had flung 
And fused into it all of its own self. 
1879. 



159- 



THE BARD AND THE SAGE. 

A bard once stood at sunset with a sage 

Upon a heaven-yearning crag that hears 

The incessant singing of a western main. 

It was the dying of an autumn day. 

Like the fair memories of righteous years 

Around the joy of an expiring heart, 

From every portion of the firmament, 

The volant clouds, like swans of painted snow, 

Did gather round the huge and crimson sun, 

Stripping three-fourths the heavens utterly, 

Till the untarnished universe did glow 

With azure so intolerably beautiful. 

So calmly, spiritually passionate, 

The ear did seem to quaff a cognizance. 

Its red ball tottered on the quivering surge. 

And, as an arc sank down in the cold green. 

It seemed to melt and run in forked streams, 

Venating the melodious emerald 

With rivers of garnet water that refused 

To mingle with each other, or to lose 



— i6o — 

Their fair identities in the sweet tide. 
Across its upper disk a long cloud lay, 
Woven of countless, coruscating hues. 
And seemed like a stupendous butterfly, 
Drinking the flaming honey from the vast 
And closing blossom of the gorgeous sun. 

Long had the two gazed mute upon the scene. 

Upon the drama of bright shape and hue 

Enacted on the stage of heaven and earth, 

Whose plot symbolic, were it understood, 

Yea, if one drop of all the stretching sea. 

Or one sweet thread of wind-unravelled cloud, 

Could but encasket the immortal part 

It plays, in the coarse, stunting guise of speech, 

It would unkey the sealed universe. 

One was a radiant youth. In the forenoon 

The morning of his years had scarcely merged. 

Lissome and willowy he was in form, 

And yet erect, save that the beauteous head 

Was slightly bent, like ripe, rich-bearing grain. 

The auburn streamers of his glossy hair 

The western wind did flout back from his brow, 

Bleached with the sleeplessness of passioned thought. 



— i6i — 

The holy fierceness of his restless eyes 

Spilling impetuous and burning tears 

Down his thin pearly cheek, and the wild thrills 

That did convulse his frail and graceful limbs, 

Betrayed a soul too full of song to sing. 

Genius, it is the icy intellect 

Transfigured to divine and burning lust. 

The afternoon of life the other one 

Descended had. His locks were silver-tipped, 

And hung in beautiful confused festoons 

Upon the large kind head that nobly sat 

Upon the stalwart shoulders that had borne 

The burdens of a half century, 

And seemed endeavoring, with vanity. 

Like to a child's, the forehead to leave bare, 

That it might wm the envy of the throng. 

It had that massiveness and tranquil breadth 

Of the pale brows that palace patient thought. 

His beard was long and grizzled like a seer's. 

Calm as he was, his gray eyes gleamed with tears^ 

And flashed a vacant, yet a piercing look. 

As if they saw into the inner shrine 

Of every color, melody and form 

That reared its tabernacle in his sense. 



162 

Long did the two gaze mute upon the scene, 
Until the silver tongue of the bard, 
Timid and tremulous, as if it feared, 
It were a profanation to pollute 
And stain, e'en with crystal eloquence, 
The emerald music of that even sea, 
That fed the occidental winds with joy, 
Broke on the passive ear of the gray sage; 
'O the hierophant of my deep heart, 
It is a throatless robin ! Could I speak 
But once what it reveals, 'twere cheap to die! 
O how divine is this majestic world, 
Whose atom the minutest scarce can stir. 
But that it does some action beautiful ! 
Behold, O sage, the spectre infinite ! 
The fathomless blue of the denuded north! 
The dissolving sun dripping in garnet streams. 
Spangling the emerald main, so subtly red 
It seems as if sweet fragrance it diffused. 
It seems 'twere crimson's disembodied soul! 
The mountain range of colored vapor piled 
Upon the ocean's glittering floor, whose peaks 
Do cleave the firmament of lavender! 
The rapture of the unslumbering winds, whose veins 



—163— 

Are crazy with the music of the surge ! 
Thou dost behold, for thou art weeping, too ! 
O man of halcyon and patient thought. 
What is the potency that asks our tears ! 
Why doth the shape, the color and the sound 
With which the universe forever blooms. 
Awake such loftiness within the breast? 
Is it because the blotless vault is blue. 
And crimson are the wandering trains of mist. 
And coiling is the creeping of the surge, 
And soft and low the crooning of its dream. 
That we do weep and call them beautiful ? 
It cannot be. What then the beautiful, 
And its divine philosophy ? " 

And thus the sage did answer his sweet words : 
'A bard thou hast been born. A trumpeter 
Thou wert enhsted in the war of Hfe. 
A mirror of the inner world. A harp 
Stirred by the sweet breath of the universe. 

Thy heart knows better what the beautiful 
Than mine can hope to know; yet if thy head 
Knows not so well as mine that which it is, 
For I did ponder e'er thou wert, I will 



— 164 — 

Reveal my thinking, that thy head informed, 
May be an ally to thy heart, and thus 
Thou wilt be better armored and equipped 
For the great mission that has fell thy lot. 
Then listen patiently to what I say : 

'•America, it is thy native land; 
Her memories, her glories, her grand hopes, 
From the dim bound where recollection doth 
Melt in the black forever of the past, 
Hath permeated thee with lofty joy; 
The glorious nectar of her history, 
Hath thused thy faculties from earliest years. 
And the mere utterance of Bunker Hill 
Doth stir thy heart as with an hundred drums. 
Yet why that ng,me? In all the, Saxon tongue 
Two words there are not which in their own selves 
Are more prosaic than these famous two. 
It is associations — Gabriel 
Calling from out the churchyard of the past, 
Warren, heroic deeds, and liberty, 
And rattling guns whose din did tumble down. 
As did the ram's horn Jericho's high walls. 
All thrones erected upon prostrate men. 



-i65- 

And rang the curtain up for a new act 
In the great drama of humanity. 
It is the coffin of this pageantry 
Which, dead, imagination has embalmed. 

" Within the tabernacle of thy heart, 
The ark is Shelley — Shelley, the divine ! 
Thy sense is full of flowers and stars and clouds, 
Music, love, odor, ruins, grass, and beams, 
Whene'er that dear, dear name is spoken, which 
Will weary time, and only fall his prey 
When the last human heart shall cease to throb; 
The weeping centuries will plead with Fate, 
That he may not be torn from their charmed hearts; 
That dear, diverging name, the purblind world, 
As yet scarce hears, but surely will ere long. 
For it is growing like a tropic morn ; 
Yet only by association sweet 
Is that name fair to thee. If he had been 
A mighty butcherer of his fellow-men, 
How would that name to thee have sounded then ! 

"It is not that the tent of evening 
Is amethyst, and lamped with warm, white stars, 
Or yon majestic clouds in the green north 



— 166— 

Are wandering mountains of frozen wine, 
That they are beautiful — snow, rainbows, moss, 
Grass, music, children, water, blossoms, stars. 
They are not beautiful in their own selves ! 
As, when the ointment of a harmony 
Doth balm the heart of a poor care-worn man, 
The ghost of his sweet youth unfounts his eyes 
So, when the soul looks on this lovely wor Id , 
Memory wakes from her terrestrial sleep 
And recognizes what? It must be God ! 
Unto the world then our felicity 
Impulsively espouse we, and we name 
It beautiful. Is this not true, O bard?" 

" O sage, thou'rt right ! It is, it must be true. 
'Tis proven by the logic of the heart. 
By intuition's winged reasoning ; 
And I will cling to it as to a bride. 
Though 'twere a bark upon a storm-tossed sea 
Of incredulity ! A part of me 
Thy wisdom shall become forevermore. 
And shall enthuse the songs that I shall sing ! " 
1881. 



— 167- 



EXTRACTS FROM AUTUMN DAY MUSINGS. 



TO L- 



To thee, dear friend, whose precious praise 

Weaves lovely fancies from my brain, 
As do Apollo's fulgent rays 

Buds from the cold clods of the plain ; 
Whose sympathy has been to me 

As sweet rain to a thirsting flower, 
And round my heart wound clingingly 

Like ivy round a lonely tower; 
To thee from whom a bitter word 

Would leave my thought as seared and riven. 
As does a storm's electric sword 

The maple thro' whose breast 'tis driven ; 
To thee, a token of regard. 

This poem do I dedicate. 
Forgive, forget, that thy reward 

Is, oh, so incommensurate.' 
The busy world will pay no heed 

To this poor, callow lay of mine, 
But thou, I know, wilt kindly read, 

So it were baseness to repine. 



— 168— 

X. 

With what a prodigal benevolence 

Does Nature garb terrestrial things with glory, 
And yet she asks of us no recompense, 

Save that we listen to her wondrous story. 
Whence come her metaphors exhaustless, whence? 

Of all the panoramas transitory, 
With which the earth she tires not of adorning. 
What is more lovely than a lovely morning ? 
XI. 

I do remember, when a little boy. 
Of one the fairest, and though very fair 

Are mornings now, they all have an alloy 
That, in my admiration, ere aware 

Freezes and filches portion of my joy. 
Far, far more beautiful dear things that wear 

The robes of memory; more fair the skies 

Ere reason breaks the prism of young eyes. 

.XII. 

Drenched by the apple-orchard's blossom showers, 
Whose perfumed drops of color in descent 

Seemed jewels spring from her exhaustless dowers 
Had the emerald hair of maid-like trees besprent, 



— 169 — 

And playful winds to whom the loving hours 

An amative mischievousness had lent, 
Like prankish lads had slipt up unaware, 
And shook them off into the blithesome air, 
XIII. 

In sweet abandonment I laid me gazing 

Upon the skies so beautiful with Him, 
Whom all things seemed uniting then in praising, 

When, from the floral ambush of a limb, 
As the recuperated sun came blazing 

Upon the world o'er the horizon's rim, 
A joyful robin redbreast filled the whole 
Heavens to overflowing with his soul ; 

XIV. 
A soul, like the widow's cruise, though being spent 

Continually, ne'er diminishes. 
I never shall forget that orient. 

The trickling music of that throat of his ; 
For then, though oft I'd dreamed what music meant, 

Methinks I quaffed a flash of what it is; 
Methinks I for a moment plain could see 
Into its dazzling infinity. 



— lyo — 

XVIII. 
How sweet to toss the bridle from our feeling, 

Although to mind and body it bodes ill, 
And from conception let our thou^^hts go reeling, 

If they but be incongruous, at will ; 
Ere cachinnation is our teeth revealing, 

To have the lachrymal its liquor spill ; 
To be an April day, for illustration ; 
An antithetical exaggeration. 

XIX. 

Some lives, like days in April, are a trifle ; 

A multiplicity of sighs and tears. 
As the last beam the black clouds seem to stifle ; 

But just at night the conquering sun appears, 
And puts them all to flight, and soaks the sky full 

Of his exultant grinning, which besmears 
The west with a chromatic splendid streaking, 
As if the bliss of Paradise was leaking. 

XXII. 
O Shakspeare, who can comprehend his mighty 

And marvellous mind ? The founts of his great 
thought 
Were inexhaustible. When he did write he 



—171— 

Took a short walk into himself, and sought 
There the materials for his loftiest flight. He 

Knew all things. How ? He turned to his strange- 
wrought 
Soul, which was a sort of — well, to be terse — 
Pocket-edition of the universe. 
XXHI. 
Mighty was Milton, but was destitute 

Of one essential of the truest poet. 
His verse as a totality is mute 

Of human sympathy, of heart, and so it 
Is like a glorious winter night. To foot 

His mind up as his lofty epics show it, 
And in a manner that is most concise, 
It was an avalanche of flaming ice. 

XXVI. 
Illimitable as the firmament 

Is human mind. It is a sort of sky. 
As only when the light of day is spent 

The sad and silent tapers gleam on high, 
So, only when the sun of hope has lent 

His last, expiring ray, extinguished by 
The copious tears of Rachel-like Remorse, 
Weeping in darkness o'er the Past's pale corse, 



— 172 — 

XXVII. 

The sky of intellectuality 

Is brilliantest with thoughts. Like stars are some. 
(Stars when they twinkle always seem to me, 

Eyes struggling with golden tears that come 
From aching thoughts for poor humanity.) 

Others like meteors strike one almost dumb 
With swift amazement, as they flash and sweep 
Up through the zenith down into the deep 
XXVIII. 

And black horizon and no more are seen. 

Only a glimpse we gain of their bright eyes. 
Others, like comets, with sublime, stern mien, 

Slow from the grim and endless space arise, 
And pause, and gaze upon us, sad, serene. 

O all ye beings of the mental skies, 
Whence come ? What are ye ? Answer not, I pray, 
If ye must tell me ye are made of clay. 
XXXIII. 

There are more heroes than we are aware; 

The earth to-day an army of them tread ; 
The greatest heroes are not those who dare 

Into the breach the assaulting ranks to head ; 



—173— 

To face the bloody bayonet, and bare 

Their breasts to battle's hurricane of lead, 
To fall a sacrifice upon the altar 
Of patriotism, freedom, and not falter ; 
XXXIV. 

For fame with trump and history with scroll 
Stand at their side, the hoarse combative drum 

Stiffens the stoic sinews of the soul 

And smites the tongue of timorousness dumb ! 

What matter though where ordnance thunders roll, 
The deaf, inexorable order come ? 

What though the steel heel of the battle horse 

Tramples to shapelessness the shattered corse ? 
XXXV. 

Glory is there to kiss the eyelids down, 
To bid the pinioned emigrants farewell ; 

To turn to smiles sublime death's angry frown, 
To soften the earthern pillow where they fell. 

The banners, too, exult in their renown. 
And grandly gaze on them who fought so well, 

A thousand panegyrics in each wave. 

As in the sulphurous smoke their bright hues lave. 



—174— 

XLIV. 

A few lone insects yet remain to sing, 

But slower are their songs, and lack the glee 
That made parched August pastures fairly ring. 

With a strange spell they ever fetter me, 
For 'neath their wands of harmony there spring 

Up from the inmost depths of memory, 
The complex features, torturingly clear, 
Of days, since idealized, made doubly dear. 

XLV. 
Ye are full half of summer. If ye were 

Robbed of your wondrous microscopic lyres. 
Swept from the earth in some wide massacre 

That Nature's comprehensive plan requires, 
(For oh, how small is human life to her 

In realizing her all-wise desires,) 
The world from azure sky to yellow field, 
Half of its grandeur then would surely yield. 
XLVI. 

For, as of poesy some mighty strain 

Moving with measured and majestic course. 

Like a broad river sweeping to the main, 
Of doubleness of joy is made the source 



—175— 

When from afar exhales some sweet refrain ; 

So, by thy rasping beautifully hoarse, 
The lovely lyric of the summer earth, 
To me who reads is of more lofty birth. 
XLVII. 

Ye are my little brothers. I explore 
The rivers of your music to their rise, 

And find the spring from which their waters pour, 
Is thought, which, though I cannot analyze. 

Dwells sleepless in my being's inmost core, 
And is in ye, if me, born of the skies. 

Consentient little brothers, part of me 

Ye ever are, and so am I of ye. 

XLVIII. 

Our greatness is proportioned to our power 
Of loving, for the more we love the more 

Do we become all things; do we devour 
And merge the imiverse into the core 

Of our illimitable spirits. Our 

Minds are no longer sponges, as before. 

Of wisdom; they are wisdom. When we bring 

Ourselves to nothing, we are everything. 



— 176 — 

LXX. 

O, how unutterably sad the hour, 

When they whom Fate has formed of finer clay 
First wake — to mark the storms of fact deflower 

The loveliness of their ideal day; 
To know that all the beauty of their bower 

Was only moods travailed of the sweet May 
Of their young hearts, as starving captives see 
Bright festal boards all spread in luxury. 

LXXl. 

It is as if some radiant-plumaged song, 

Some dazzling shape of pinioned music, born 

Where rolls the mighty Amazon along. 
Was from its tropical elysium torn. 

And hurled beneath the hoofs of blasts that throng 
The snow-Sahara of Siberian morn; 

All trampled, left to shiver and to die. 

Under the scowling of the leaden sky. 
LXX IV. 

The spirit of the place. O, who was she? 

Here is the same, same stream where she was angling, 
Sitting beneath the shadow of that tree, 

Whose dancing leaves are with the sunbeams tangling; 



—177— 

Here is the same pool still as still can be, 

In whose placidity her hook was dangling; 
It seemed as if the stream paused here its flight 
To clasp unto its breast a shape so bright. 

LXXV. 

It seems but yesterday I passed this gateway, 
Where I did most perspiringly aver 

That I had trudged beneath the sun a great way. 
And never in my life was thirstier. 

I would be pleased for water, said I; straightway 
A crystal-brimming cup was brought by her; 

Each drop was full of sparkling jealousy. 

So purer than its purity was she. 

LXXVI. 

She was as wondrous sweet as it would seem, 
If on some summer eve that fragrance fills, 

Just as the mute and yellow moon doth gleam 
Over the black, conspicuous east hills, 

Firing the tortuosity of stream. 

That pebble-babbling sibilantly trills, 

The little birds should waken everyone. 

And, singing, greet her as they do the sun. 



—178— 

LXXX. 

Go, search to the remotest bound of earth, 
And thou wilt find this true as true can be. 

That heart is all there is of any worth. 
That all the rest is mist and vanity ; 

And in some future generation's birth 

Men will know this. If they could only see 

Each other's naked heart, there'd be a ban on 

(This very day) forts, bayonets and cannon. 
LXXXI. 

If only we poor mortals were acquainted, 

As sometime our posterity will be. 
Half of the woe with which our lives are tainted, 

Like fogs before the golden morn would flee, 
And myriads now sinful might be sainted ; 

No more the prison and the gallows-tree 
Would rear their sad anomaly of terror; 
A staggering blow, wouldst thou receive, foul Error. 
XCV. 

Like to ten thousand fallen Ninevehs 

Tornadoed into one tremendous pile, 
O as if Order's funeral it was, . 

And earth, and air, and flame, and flood the while 



m 
— 179— 

Had gathered round the bier of natural laws ! 

As if all beauty that did ever smile 
From out the universe's matter-vision 
Was strewn and heaped in dazzling demolition ! 

XCVI. . 

O color-maelstrom ? holocaust of splendor ! 

O firmament-shekinah ! beauty-hell ! 
O torture me no longer ! Thou dost render 

My soul disenergied, faint, too unwell ! 
Dissolve, commingle into twilight tender 

Now breathing her inexplicable spell ! 
One, two, three, four — come, little stars dusk- wrestling! 
Come night, like sleep o'er babies bosom-nestling ! 

XCIX. 

Like ghosts of mastodons the clouds are gazing 
From out the water-green of the cold west ; 

The yellow ice of the round moon is blazing 
Upon the white world's silhouetted breast; 

Above the frozen woods its globe is raising. 
Whose branches with the silence are impressed ; 

Like scorpions their sable shadows show 

Upon the powdery and creaking snow. 



i8o- 



civ. 

Of all attachments which we form on earth, 
What is there like that to our native home, 

The little town where we were given birth ? 
If 'twixt the two the wild seas rave and roam, 

A foreign country , what would it be worth ? 
A golden palace with a diamond dome ? 

Our home is of the universe the center, 

And all her loveliness is by it lent her. 
CV. 

'Twas there we built the future's gorgeous castle; 

'Twas there we dreamed sweet dreams too sweet to 
last, 
Before we knew or had become thy vassal, 

Experience, thou base iconoclast. 
Elysian boyhood days, thy joys surpass all, 

Times fully infinite, what manhood hast. 
Sway, if thou wilt, a mighty nation o'er, 
But let me muse beside a cottage door. 
CVI. 

O Chardon, dreary are all things elsewhere. 

Somehow thy stars bloom grander, and thy flowers 
Beam brjghter, and thy moon is far more fair 



— i8i— 

When blooming in night's blue and blossomed bowers. 
Expression, oh, how very weak you are ! 

You've made my thought so stagnant, ere it sours, 
I with hyperbole this rhyme will leaven, 
I should be homesick almost if in heaven. 
1880-81. 



— 182— 



THE ISLAND. 

An island long ago was mire. It was 
A lovely planet in the stoimless sky 
Of a forever-laughing, shoreless sea. 
I shape no concept of the agency 
That brought me to that Eden insular, 
And make me eremite of all its bliss. 
The surges of the ages have destroyed 
The footprints of that bright event which once 
Did roam the blooming coast of memory. 
Yet reason, from her mines, exhaustless, rich, 
Exhumes this jewel of sagacity : 
Whate'er its essence was, 'twas winged, and clove 
The overarching and resplendent heavens. 
Flew downward with me from some vale sublime, 
Perchance the center of eternity. 

O happy was I thro" those eons fair, 
Eons, since only with that word I may 
Express the multitude of centuries, 
That, like song-souled and dazzling-plumaged birds, 
Flew past my unappreciating thought. 



-i83- 

I could not hear the dirges of the feet 
Of the thronging legions of the cruel hours, 
Mangling the blossoms innocent of hopes, 
Platting the April meadows of the heart. 

O Nature, I am thy idolater. 
And hearken, never flew one shining day 
Of all those myriads, but that my soul 
Had lost its own identity in thine. 
And well dost thou repay thy worshippers. 
For every drop of love I proffered thee. 
Thou pouredst forth an ocean in return. 
My eyes were ever fastened on thy face. 
Whether the moon did fill with silver wine 
The azure goblet ol the summer even. 
And God did light his tapers numberless, 
And hang their brilliance on the ceiling blue 
Of the cathedral of His universe. 
Or happy seas did flash beneath the sun, 
Like sweet June skies with harmless lightnings fraught 
Or sob up to the sadness terrible 
Of burdened-hearted stars, in unison 
With all the suspirations, trembly, heavy-drawn, 
Of frighted, thinking, midnight forests, or 



— 184— 

Like monks, at night's meridian, torch-arrayed, 
Wending their solemn and their winding files, 
Unto the dying embers of some sacrifice. 
Processions of chromatic-fringed, craped clouds. 
With cressets made of stars, did gather round 
The flickering altar of the setting moon, 
A mirror did thy every act find me. 

Too happy, O too happy was I then. 
It was a morning neither more nor less 
Than all its predecessors glorious, 
And if I pondered as in robes of flame 
Over the sea's savannas blue it walked, 
It seemed the usher of another day. 
Another link in an unending chain. 
But scarcely of his journey had the sun 
A fourth part put behind him, and while yet 
My hermit heaven was fresh with the young hours, 
A frightful shudder numbed the joyful air. 
And lo, at the horizon's edge appeared 
A belt of grimmest black that slowly grew 
From all directions to the zenith point. 
O, what a hurricane of agony 
Did ravage, devastate my happiness, 



-i85- 

As all alone in a wide universe, 

As all alone in watery infinity, 

I saw all changing into ice and black. 

My lovely island withered to a plank, 

And I, a sempiternal horror, there 

Was doomed to immortality ! The moon. 

For many a lifeless age a globe of gore. 

Did wander thro' the black and frozen air. 

And then went out, extinguished in its terror. 

Forever o'er me in the firmament. 

Legions of white, gigantic skeletons. 

Crazed by the awful stench of the sea's corse. 

With horrid grins, did swing their marcid limbs. 

And shriek and wail in their colossal madness. 

O, lovely isle, why wert thou taken from me? 
O, horrid isle, why wert thou given to me ? 
Why was it so, but why are all things so? 
Too happy, O, too happy was I then! 
1880. 



— 186— 



SONG. 
When are summer roses sweetest ? 

When their sweet is shed. 
When are summer skies the fairest? 

When their light is fled. 
Strange it is we never prize 
Blooming rose nor bonny skies, 

Till the rose's sweet is shed 

And the summer's light is fled. 

When are present hours the brightest ? 

When their hopes are sped. 
When are friendly faces dearest ? 

When those friends are dead. 
Sad it is we never prize 
Happy hours nor loving eyes, 

Till the happy hours are sped 

And the loving eyes are dead. 

1878. 



— 187- 



LINES. 

^f life were only love and peace, 

From grief and disappointment free, 

Should all its storms and battles cease, 
It would be better not to be. 

O what is there worth living for. 

If not to breast some tempest's wrath, 

If not to wage victorious war 
With obstacles that block our path? 

Without the cross there is no crown. 
Without the clash of steel, the march. 

No conqueror of high renown. 
No trophies, no triumphal arch. 

Rebuke and scorn should nerve the soul, 

Enthuse it with combative life 

To conquer fate, attain the goal 

Aspired, or perish in the strife. 
1878. 



i88— 



ACROSTIC 

Greatest of kings and conquerors he is; 
An Alexander of the human heart. 
/Pebellions cannot shake a throne like his, 
For it is built of tears' enduring art, 
/n a white capitol of love, as broad 
E'en as unbounded space, and high as God. 
Z.et ages surge ; such empires they can only be 
/disintegrated, when expires humanity. 
1882. 



■189- 



TO M . 

• 
Cold is the night and black the sky 

And lightnings kiss the west, 

And many a long, long league am I 

From thy beloved breast. 

As the poor hunted elk at noon 
Thirsts for the clear, cold brooks. 

Thought-chased, I pant for the sweet boon 
Of thy dear lips and looks. 

Seest thou yon pale cloud-coffined star 

That's burst its cerements ? 
Methinks thou seest it from afar, 

So gaze I more intense. 

For separated from thine eyes , 

And their entrancing light, 
To see the same star in the skies. 

With them is a delight. 

Yes, thou art looking, for yon orb 
Is withering slow but sure; 



— 190 — 

And naught but thy eyes could absorb, 
Outbeam a shine so pure. 

The captive shell torn from the surge, 

With travelers to roam , 
Forever chants a mournful dirge, 

Wails for its watery home. 

So chants my heart, a sad, sad air, 

Wherever it may rove, 
For its own palace, rich and rare. 

In the sea of thy love. 

1878. 



191 



SONG. 

So much more beautiful is she 
Than any flower can ever be, 
That when about her brow divine 
A wreath of roses she did twine, 
They lost their beauty, rich and rare, 
Because so near a face so wondrous fair. 

The stars, bright jewels in night's crown, 
Ne'er sparkle till the sun sinks down. 
I cannot see their tranquil beam 
So great is his all-glorious gleam , 
Nor flowers, however rich and rare. 
When they are near a face so wondrous fair. 
1878. 



— 192 — 



SONNETS. 
I. 

And I complete my nmeteenth year to-day; 

So much of life spent and so little won; 

So much attempted, and so little done. 
If I may breathe till wrinkled, sear and sray, 
Still one-third of my Hfe is passed away. 

Despondent I review the race I've run; 

Nineteen long years existed, lived not one. 
O could I pen one lone and lofty lay, 
A reflex of the rhyme within my heart. 

To moisten with exaltedness one eye, 
To lift one soul above the sordid mart. 

In an attunement with yon sunset sky; 
One mighty rhyme to live when I depart. 

It seems I'd call me old, and willing die. 
II. 

All earth is full of poetry to-day. 

From yon deep-blue, unutterable sky, 

To the grasshopper's parched and shrilly cry 

Among the fragrant swathes of fresh mown hay. 



—193 — 

Some spirit not of earth holds regal sway. 

Upon a shady, grassy slope I lie, 

A thrill is in my veins and in my eye 
A tear, so grand is August's rich array. 
The martial files of emerald-coated maize, 

The lazy lowing of the distant herds, 
The melodies of insect roundelays, 

Broad yellow fields, gay woods and lute-tongued birds, 
And over-brooding all, great sun, thy blaze, — 

For such a day as this, O where are words ? 

III. 

The world is growing better every day, 

Despite the croakings of a class of men, 

Who shake their heads, and harp of virtue when 
Their bleak December lives were fertile May. 
Cassandras of these times, avaunt, I say; 

In council chamber, pulpit, press and pen 

The world is better than't has ever been. 
The clouds of wrong are breaking slow away 

And through the rifts there comes the faintest gleam 
Of an eternal sunshine-flood of right; 

Sages of eld, the sweet Utopian dream 
Ye dreamed in the cold sleep of ancient night, 
13 



—194— 

Ere long is fact; adown time's rapid stream 
A few more eons sail, then all is light. 

IV. 

Mid all the fever of this changeful earth, 

The hum, the hurry, the perpetual jar, 
Disturbed not by man's misery or mirth, 

Thou movest on the same, oh lovely star, 
Serene and beautiful as at thy birth. 

When in the mind dark doubts arise and mar 
The tablet of pure thought, I prize thy worth, 

And love to watch thy glimmerings from afar. 
There is a something in thy steadfast shining 

Soothing the heart that feels that Fate is wronging 
Philosophy becalming the repining 

Of bitter thoughts tempestuously thronging ; 
Involuntarily the soul is twining 

Garlands of fadeless faith with strenuous longing. 
1878. 



■195— 



WHY THE SUNBEAMS DANCE AND PLAY. 

Bird in yonder leafy glen, 

Singing all the sunny day, 
Far away from haunts of men , 

Whisper me one secret, pray ; 
Cease your warbling for a minute, 
Blithesome robin, wren and linnet, 

Listen what I have to say. 

Tell me why the sunbeams peek 
Through the branches of'the trees, 

Dancing, playing hide and seek 
With the softly sighing breeze ; 

Over brooklet margins peeping, 

Up the shady hillsides creeping. 
Never taking any ease. 

They within our windows look, 

When preferring solitude. 
Prying into every nook 

In a- manner more than rude ; 
Certainly they have been drinking 



— 196 — 

Something strong now I am thinking, 
Some decoction they have brewed. 

'We will tell you," said the wren, 

"At the morning's dawn they skip 
To the meadows fair, and then 

All the dewdrops sweet they sip ; 
And throughout the summer season 
They are drunk, that is the reason, 
On the pearly dew they sip." 



1877. 



197— 



LINES. 

In the palace of a thought, 
And imagination-wrought, 
Dwells a maiden glory-fraught ; 
And her eyes, oh, her eyes. 
They are like the hue that dyes 
Eventides the Grecian skies ; 
And her laughing cheeks do glow 
Where the brooks of vigor flow 
Like two roses dipped in snow ; 
And her silky gold hair teems, 
O'er each rotund shoulder streams, 
As if a bouquet of beams 
Had been drawn, as moistures rise, 
When the sun is in the skies. 
By the radiance of her eyes ; 
Then she linked them to her brow, 
Where they're flaunting, flowing now. 
Like to ruby-tinted coral. 
Like to crimson beauties floral. 
In the dewy hours auroral. 



—198— 

Like unto Apollo's bow, 
Are the lips that rule me so, 
With me wheresoe'er I go ; 
They are with me all the morn, 
When the south-wind waves the corn, 
Like Erin's banners battle-torn ; 
When the lake is starry glass, 
And the insects in the grass 
Chant unto the moon their mass, 
As the blue she saileth through, 
In a fleecy-cloud canoe, 
With the Pleiades as crew. 
1878. 



■ 199- 



LIFE AND DEATH. 

Life is but a little island 

Betwixt two eternities, 
Where we anchor for a while, and 

Sleep, forgetting that which is ; 
All is but a dream of sadness, 

Interspangled here and there 
With effulgent glints of gladness. 

Like the jewels in Night's hair ; 
Like the banners Dawn is furling 

From her gates of amethyst. 
When the dew-drops are impearling. 

Only sunbeam-tinted mist ; 
Death is only the awaking, 

From this sleep in which were men, 
The embarking and the taking 

Of our journey up again. 
1878. 



■200 



NOVEMBER. 

April has gone in fickle moods 

Of rainbowed smiles and tearful showers, 
And songful June with gay green woods 

And breezes odorous with flowers ; 
Old August with his kingly sheen, 

And insect pagans on the wold ; 
October with her somber mien 

All panoplied with red and gold. 

Now all the hills are sad and mute. 

And Beauty weeps in faded bowers, 
And naked forest's wind-swept lute 

Is wailing for the withered flowers ; 
Haggard is the forbidding sky, 

Cold, leaden, fraught with brumal wrath, 
And everywhere the dead leaves lie, 

Like dreams of youth in manhood's path. 

O very dreary are these days ; 

Mirrored we see life as it is ; 
See — that the glorious decays ; 

See— that our hopes are vagaries. 



1878. 



20I 

'Tis true the flowers will bloom again 
Beneath the glow of genial suns 

And April's resurrecting rain, 

But will they be the same dear ones ? 



MAY. 

Soft are the airs, and every tree 

Is overflown with singmg, 
And by the stream's unshackled glee 

The violet is springing ; 
All things are mantled in delight, 

The winds are fragrance-freighted, 
And the far clouds are silky-white 

And warm and tesselated ; 
They seem to me like lattice-work 

Round Paradise's portal, 
And thro' the checkerings do lurk 

The eyes of birds immortal ; 
And, as the sun doth soak the sky 

With floods of yellow amber. 
O'er them I see with mine own eye 

Flowers amaranthine clamber. 



1880. 



-202- 



"WHY DOES IT RAIN SO MUCH IN FALL? 

' ' Why does it rain so much in fall ? " 
The night winds asked an elm-tree tall, 
One twilight as they chanced to meet 
Far in a woodland's dim retreat, 
Where not a voice except their own 
Re-echoed through the silence lone; 
The branches most their leaves had shed, 
But each one nodded back his head, 
Then answered, trembhng with a sigh: 

" It is because the flowers must die; 

The fair and fragile flowers that spring 

Where happy robins love to sing, 

In autumn, in each glen and glade. 

They then, you know, begin to fade, 

Till trenchant winds and cruel snows 

Freeze every vein where beauty flows ; 

And, Mother Nature, dear and good, 

Shed tears of pity in a flood; 

So that, ye night-winds, one and all. 

Is why it rains so much in fall." 
1877. 



— 203- 



LINES TO A ROBIN FOUND FROZEN. 

And thou art dead, my pretty one, 

All frozen is thy little throat ; 
No more thoul't greet the waking sun. 

Or cheer us with thy welcome note; 
No more thoul't perch amid the boughs 

Of budding plum-trees on the lawn, 
And with thy matchless lute arouse 

Our slumbers at the birth of dawn. 
As I behold thee cold and stiff", 

And fled thy soul of sweetest song, 
It almost seems to me as if 

Thy sad untimely fate is wrong. 
My heart, cease murmuring, for all 

Is as it should be, and is right; 
And e'en a sparrow does not fall 

Without His guiding care and sight ; 
And though it seems so wrong to man. 

When gazed at through his mortal eyes. 
It is a portion of the plan, 

The righteous plan of the All-wise. 
1878. 



204 — 



LINES. 

She was a fair, exotic flower 

Transplanted from above, 
Too fragile for our earthly bower, 

She was so much of love. 

I never shall forget her eyes, 

They were as keenly bright 
As planets in the Christmas skies, 

When all the ground is white. 

Andyetas modest beams displayed. 

As of a fawn or dove ; 
It seemed as if their smiles were made 

Of rainbows, peace and love. 

But slowly withered she away, 

Like the thin white moon of mom, 

Or silver echoes, eves in May, 
Of some sweet bugle-horn; 

And when the first hoarse blast did sweep 
Through autumn's withered bowers. 



— 205— 

We, weeping, laid her down to sleep, 
With all the other flowers. 

She was so beautifully bright. 

We thought she was a gem 
Some angel in an earthward flight 

Dropped from his diadem. 

So, when our hearts were sorrow-tossed, 

Above a clodded mound, 
We thought we mourned forever lost 

That which was only found. 

Since stars melt in the pale blue sky 

When the red day is born, 
It may be the dear friends that die. 

Are lost in Heaven's morn. 
1879. 



— 2o6- 



TO TWO NIGHT-BLOOMING CEREI. 
Solemn flowers, lovely flowers, 
Only in the dark and gloom 
Do ye bloom, do ye bloom ; 
Only in those hushed grim hours, 
When Cyclops Night strides thro' the sky, 
With the red moon as his great eye. 
And like a serpent thro' the trees 
Creepeth every shuddering breeze, 
Only in those hours of gloom. 
Do ye bloom, do ye bloom. 

Thus with love, thus with love. 
That forever true will prove; 
Only in the dark and gloom. 
Does it bloom, does it bloom. 
Not when birds of joy sing. 
Not when flowers of peace upspring, 
But when pain and grief have hurled 
All the light from out the world ; 
Then its blossoms all unfold. 

Burst into a bloom untold. 

1879. 



■207- 



LINES. 

How strange the mention of a name 

Will summon back the years, 
And fan the embers of a flame 

One deemed was quenched in tears; 
Association, strange thy spell, 

That, on a robin's note, 
Mid scenes our youth loved- — ah, too well- 

Our beings swift may float; 
That, through a telescope of flowers, 

Of skies, or singing streams. 
May see the long-departed bowers 

Which canopied our dreams. 
O Time, I make but one request. 

Wilt thou not grant it me? 
'Twill soothe an aching in my breast; 

The only remedy : 
If thou with sorrow must alloy 

The feelings of hearts true. 
If thou must rob us of our joy. 

O Time, take memory, too; 



— 2o8— 

Where, ivy-like, her thoughts may creep 

O'er ruins of the past. 

Leave recollection not to weep 

Our treasures that thou hast. 
1879. 



WORDS. 

How weak and dull are tongue and pen, 

E'en exercised by gifted men ! 

They never give to us the thought, 

As in the forge of heaven 'tis wrought, 

And on their mental mirrors caught ; 

And though they thrill, and weep, and ever 

Lift their pale faces to the sky. 

And wring their hands in mad endeavor, 

Down in their graves at last they lie. 

With all their harmony unlyred ! 

Yes, chained are the powers of such as these. 

Though with the gloA^ of genius fired, 

For words are coffins of ideas ! 
1881. 



-209 — 



FRAGMENT. 

Who knows but that this crystal world, • 

This universe of sphered crlass through which 

The shining of the Father infinite 

The Beautiful is making, has evolved 

The spirituality of human kind. 

Immured in protoplastic infancy 

In the chill, lampless Bastiles of their dust, 

Too superficial and too narrow were 

The sperms to compass the impalpable 

And sempiternal right, and so, as we. 

To little pupils object-lessons give, 

Did righteousness sing, scintillate and shine 

From rain and beams and frosts and orbs and winds. 

From choral \vaves and tinkling foliage. 

And moons of dew on pink-white kirtled flowers. 

From soaring curls of smoke, like ringlets clipped 

Of white-haired giants, and fair irises 

Ringing the beauty of dissolving storms ; 

From looking-glasses of the polished pools, 

From lightning, cataract and avalanche, 

The galaxy, the ocean and the sun, 
14 



2IO 

From all the vision of the universe, 
Thus polishing the facets of their beings, • 
Thus sharpening the swords of their perception, 
Until in more maturity of race 
Might their posterity, as it doth now, 
And better doth each generation, see, 
And love and clasp and cherish the unseen. 
1881. 



FRAGMENT. 

Yon rainbow, necklace of the lovely Even, 
Is not disintegrated light alone. 
When, in the crucible of ideality, 
Yon azure endlessness is analyzed, 
Not chemist's elements alone we find. 
But something of more high development; 
Too high for our philosophy to touch. 
And so it stoopeth down and toucheth us. 
1879. 



-211- 



LINES. 

The longer I ponder, 
The farther I wander, 
Till, like a condor, 

Mighty, yet blind, 
That feels the wide morning 

Thrill to its great pinons, 

Built for dominions 
Sun, clouds are adorning, 

Mourneth my mind. 

My heart is not married. 
No, no, to this arid 
Strand wiiere I have tarried 

In anguish and gloom; 
Because I am chaffing. 

And as others are doing. 

My pale spectre pursuing. 
What is all of this laughing? 

Moonhght on a tomb. 

Yet, I'm almost believing. 
The cause of my grieving. 



112 

And storms never leaving 
The sky of my breast, 

Is I do not yet answer 
The end the All-seeing 
Proposed in my being. 

Is this the foul cancer 
Erodmtf my rest ? 



1882. 



LINES. 



Above the winds and plangent rain, 
And thunders rolling loud and long, 

I hear thy shrill and crystal strain, 
O winged sapphire souled with song. 

Above the winds and rain of fear 
And pain, and thunders of despair, 

So, only sweeter, do I hear 
A bird within my heart declare 

That shallow-thoughted is distrust. 

That every inflorescence must 

In its developed bloom be just; 

That real is soul and unreal dust. 
1882. 



—213— 

GOD BLESS THE BRAVE OLD PIONEERS. 
[From the History of Geauga County.] 

God bless the brave old pioneers 

Who forged our native land ! 
Their names and'deeds my soul reveres, 

I love that noble band. 

I think I see my country now, 

As once it was possessed, 
A forest on the fertile brow 

Of all the teeming West. 

Where Learning her rich tribute brings 

Dwell Sloth and Ignorance ; 
Where Labor's voice of tumult rings, 

I hear the savage dance. 

No church spire points to Him on high, 

Beneath the purple dome ; 
A fugitive is Industry, 

There is no school or home. 



214 — 

No steamer plies the river's blue, 

No railroad spans the plain, 
No stars and stripes of stainless hue 

Wave o'er the wide domain. 

All, all a desert wild and lone, 

As trackless as the seas, 
To the Caucasian foot unknown, 

A boundless waste of trees. 

I think I see a stalwart few. 

With axe and trusty gun, 
Bid the Atlantic coast adieu, 

And face the setting sun. 

They penetrate the vast dark woods, 

Where countless foes reside, 
Where bears and panthers nurse their broods 

And human beasts abide. 

I hear the ringing of the axe 

Re-echo through the glen, 
I hear the rifle's sharp, fierce cracks 

And shouts of angry men. 



— 2T5 — 

And lo ! there is a happy lull, 

When over all the land 
Spring states and cities beautiful, 

As by an enchanter's wand. 

The Indian is but a name. 

The wilderness is gone, 
The night was storm and battle-flame, 

Behold the glorious dawn ! 

God bless the brave old pioneers ! 

Most all are passed away ; 
A few of venerable years 

Are with us still to-day. 

Alas, their number smaller grows 

As each year hurries by, 
And soon in death's long, sweet repose 

The last true heart will lie. 

All kindness, reverence bestow, 

And let us strive to pay 
The debt of gratitude we owe 

To them; not long we may. 



2l6 — 

O twine a garland for each brow, 
And kiss each withered cheek, 

And let the hand of deeds tell how 
The powerless tongue would speak. 

God bless the brave old pioneers ! 

Their names shall grace Fame's page 
As long as a free man reveres 

His priceless heritage. 

O yes, as long as freedom's sun 
On hope's bright sky appears, 

Next to the men of Lexington 
Shall be the pioneers. 



1878. 



-217" 



TO . 

Leave me, dear one, until to-morrow ; 

I would not see thy face to-day ; 
Leave me to mine own shame and sorrow, 

I am all clay. 

The winds are soft as the caresses 
Of the white arms of thee I love, 

And sweet as thy most amorous kisses ; 
And up above. 

Like flocks of sleeping albatrosses. 
The white clouds sail as the dear years, 

Before the crosses and the losses 
Bring toil and tears. 

The world, to-day, I am unable 

Its glory to appreciate ; 
Not one great sentence of its fable 

Can I translate. 

Green woods are full of pinioned jewels. 
Warm airs of their unfathomed strains. 



— 2l8— 

But they are ceased to be the fuels 
Of my refrains. 

The power which is not mine is gone; 

I am a clod that knows it's one ; 
I feel to-day as would a dawn 

Without a sun. 

Then leave me, dear one, till to-morrow, 
I will not see thy eyes to-day ; 

Leave me to mine own shame and sorrow, 
I am all clay. 

Soon, soon my star it will return, 
It is not quenched, if it be flown ; 

Then will it fairer, purer burn 
Than ever known. 

1882. 



■219- 



CHRISTMAS NIGHT. 

High o'er the alabaster hills 
Ascends the Christmas moon, 

And with a flood of glory fills 
The fading afternoon. 

High o'er the tall and eastern pines, 

A seraph blest she soars, 
And sprinkles diamonds from her mines 

O'er all earth's marble floors. 

The air is full of jinging bells, 

Exhilarance and glee, 
And, arrow-like, o'er frozen dells 

And glittering hills we flee. 

A watchful sentinel of earth, 
The sworded Perseus stands, 

And from his azure beat looks forth 
On the terrestrial lands. 

The stars are bright as spirits' eyes, 
But oh, not half so bright, 



220 

As galaxies in parents' skies, 
For this is Christmas night; 

And should the good sun fail to rise, 

As rise he surely will, 
I know the light in children's eyes 

The vacancy would fill. 



1879. 



TO , 

O lovely maid. 

Thy charms must fade, 

The years will dim that eye of blue, 
And on thy cheek, 
(How sad to speak,) 

There will be many a wrinkle, too. 

But lovely maid, 

Be not afraid ; 
Fly with your beauty to your heart; 

Once lock it there. 

And you may dare 
The robber Time's most subtile art. 
1880. 



-221- 



WHEN I AM DEAD. 

When I am dead, 
And sleeping in the silent tomb, 

Above my head 

I wish no monument to loom 
Its marble shaft in stately gloom. 

But let the seeds, 
That I in human hearts have sown , 

Of lofty deeds 

And great ideas be alone 

My statue and sepulchral stone. 

They never die; 

The cruel waves of change shall roll, 

As years pass by. 

O'er every cherished earthly goal, 
They are immortal as the soul. 



222 

IN MEMORIAM. 

While skies are mild and robins sing 

And from the sward the blossoms creep, 
Clasped in the emerald arms of spiing, 

Thou art asleep. 
Sad, sad, that while all things rejoice 

From rosy dawn to starlight dim, 
Thou shalt not lift thy thankful voice 

In the grand hymn. 

Yes, we are sad, but it may be. 

Upon some cloudless summer star. 
That thou, for us who cannot see, 

Art sadder far. 
Freed from the doubts that life deform, 

Without a stain, without a stain, 
The stress, the struggle and the storm 

For us remain. 
Around our darkened hearts, the bloom 

Of thy short life, so much divine, 

Like Easter lilies round a tomb 

Shall ever twine. 
1882. 



— 223 — 

FRAGMENT. 

Where are ye all, innumerable Huns, 
Ye whom the jaws of Scyihia disgorged ; 
Who like a simoon over Europe swept, 
And left your path a snake of devastation ; 
Who thundered at the gates of Christendom 
And made the cheek of Progress pale with fear ? 
Where are ye all ? Disintegrated and dissolved 
Back into earth and air and fire^nd water ; 
Full fourteen hundred Junes ago ye waxed 
Weary and feeble, fainted by the roadside, 
And on the bosom of your mother earth 
Ye fell asleep, and never more will waken ! 
Glutton insatiate, oblivion, 

. Their memory defies thy ruthless maw ! 
In the grand senate-house of history 
Arises the colossal shadow of Attilla. 
He is their generahzation. He 
Is their epitome. He is the wand 
With which the broad brows of historians 
May resurrect them from their countless graves, 
May rehabilitate them in the ranks of life. 

1881. 



224" 



TO . 

If victory sees fit to roost 

Upon the banners of thy might, 
if ever Fate gives thee a boost, 

The news will bring to me delight. 
Now, if you think I do not lie. 

Unselfish deem me not. Just wait 
A moment, -until I 

Elucidate, 

In Chardon park there are some pines. 

And when the morn's rejoicing sun 
Upon their little circle shines, 

It cannot shine on any one, 
Unless it shines on all the rest. 

So close is their society. 
If any one is blest 

They all must be. 

So, when such actions you have done. 
That on you radiantly shme 

E.xulting beams of glory's sun, 

My heart shall throb so close to thine. 



—225 — 

That it must drink their life and cheer; 

A May-rain of their warmth, I know, 
On my December drear 

Must flow and glow. 



1882. 



LINES. 



How glorious it is to be alive ! 

I know the world is full of wrong and pain 

And funerals and terror ; that the stars 

But thatch an undertaker's shop ; that trees 

And birds and sparkling flowers and angel clouds 

Are wove of dead men, and that even Hope 

Has no veracity ; yet, after all, 

There is more pleasure than there is of pain ! 

There is an Eden in each drop of dew ! 

There is a heaven in every wandering cloud ! 

And not the altar of a lovely star 

Burns in the purple dusk, but balances 

In the mysterious steelyards of the life 

Of him who is of high development, 

Long years of disappointment and of pain ! 



226- 



FRAGMENTS OF WIT AND HUMOR. 

A man without courage and physical vigor, 
Though he be of superior intellect, is 

Like an old U. S. musket that's minus a trigger, 
All shotted and capped yet not ready for "biz. 



Consider me nor imbecile nor crazy ; 

I know a youth who never need fear death, 
Because he is so despicably lazy, 

He has not strength to draw his final breath. 



An Indian that's healthy 
Strong Hkeness very show'th 

To him with learning wealthy, 
For well-read men are both. 



He has such powers of elocution, should 
He read a lot of figures to you, 'twould 
Occasion outbursts like an orphan calf ; 



227 

Or if he should articulate a half 

Page of some agricultural report, 

Where's the suspenders could sustain the sport ? 



Learned scientists have said, 
In their books which I have read. 
That the cause of earthquakes must 
Be a shrinkage of earth's crust ; 
Now, my friend, it seems to me. 
That there is a theory- 
Better far, and it is this : 
Earth so very long has been. 
Being old, has now and then 
Strokes of the paralysis. 



The plow upturns the glebe, and what a crop 
Of angle-worms He squirming at the top ! 
Some hundred years ago, with horrid war 
God plowed the mighty nations near and far ; 
Blood was the vivifying rain. 
And Liberty the glorious grain ; 
Fecund have proved all the germs ; 
The great men were the angle-worms . 



— 228— 

I am acquainted with a certain youth 
Who never yet was known to tell the truth, 
But not a mortal man beneath the skies 
Has such a genius for dispensing lies ; 
If he should tell me two and two are four, 
I should reject that truth forevermore ; 
The whole is ever equal to the sum 
Of all its parts — that is an axiom ; 
But woe unto that principle, woe ! woe! 
If he perchance should say that it is so. 



If I should bring to you a muddy cup 

Of water from the ocean's bottom up, 

How foolish it would be for you to say 

That all the boundless ocean is that way. 

How much more foolish, then, thou purblind mime, 

It is to judge Eternity by Time ; 

Life is a swingle, we the dirty fla.x. 

How can you marvel at our daily "whacks." 



